Poetry Review #3- WHAT MY MOTHER DOESN'T KNOW

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones

1.     BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sones, Sonya. What My Mother Doesn't Know. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2001.

 ISBN 978-0-689-84114-9

2.     PLOT SUMMARY

Through a series of poems, the teenage narrator, Sophie, tells the story of her first experiences with love.  She shares with us her relationships with family, friends, and boys as she struggles to reach adulthood. Sophie moves through her first relationships with the support of her childhood friends Grace and Rachel. In addition to the stress of maintaining relationships with friends and boyfriends, Sophie struggles to understand and be understood by her mother, an overly emotional woman. The distance that she feels from her family mirrors her feelings of isolation from the rest of society.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

This book is a verse novel by Sonya Sones that expresses the feelings of a teenage girl. Each poem has a different title and describes one moment in Sophie’s life. The story keeps moving in order to keep the readers connected to the main character. The book is not set as a rhyming poetry but is more like reading a journal in which Sophie describes how much she loves her friends, her relationship with her family, and her search for true love. My favorite poem in the book was “I’m Dreaming”. Sophie is dreaming about a man in a painting that she saw and he morphs into her friend Murphy whom she is not attracted to but really likes.  The poem is a little sexual and while the man in the painting is unbuttoning her blouse he becomes Murphy and she writes “And in my dream this only makes me want him more.”  This book can be enjoyed by teenagers and adults who can easily connect with the story and discover little pieces of themselves in Sophie. The shape of the poem and the use of fonts compliment the story perfectly.

4.  REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

YALSA Best Books for Young Adults - 2002

YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: Fiction: 2002

Booklist Editors' Choice - Books for Youth - Older Readers Category: 2001

From School Library Journal: “Sones's poems are glimpses through a peephole many teens may be peering through for the first time, unaware that others are seeing virtually the same new, scary, unfamiliar things.”

From Publisher’s Weekly: “Drawing on the recognizable cadences of teenage speech, Sones (Stop Pretending) poignantly captures the tingle and heartache of being young and boy-crazy.”

5. CONNECTIONS

Gather read-a-like books to read such as:

Green, John, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, ISBN: 978-0-142-41847-5

Murdock, Catherine Gilbert, Dairy Queen, ISBN: 978-0-618-86335-8

Vizzini, Ned, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, ISBN:  978-0786851973

Gather other Sonja Sones books to read such as:

What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know, ISBN:  978-1-442-49384-1

One of Those Hideous Books Where My Mother Dies, ISBN:  978-1-442-49383-4

Have students pick one of the poems in the book and adapt it to be true for themselves by changing the necessary parts of the poem. Students may practice adapting more than one poem until they feel comfortable with the format.

A discussion on the safety of internet chats and dating could be initiated.