What My Mother Doesn't Know Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sones, Sonya. What My Mother Doesn't Know. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2001. ISBN 9781442493858

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Sophie is doing her best to survive the ninth grade. She's wild about boys, but doesn't know anything about relationships: how to start one, how to maintain one, or what kind of person to have one with, so she's just following her gut instincts. She's also at odds with her parents, who are emotionally absent from her life, but with her two best friends by her side, a good heart, and a fierce sense of self-preservation, Sophie uses her poetry to keep herself grounded.

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Sonya Sones has written many young adult books using free verse to tell the teenage perspective on adolescence. What My Mother Doesn't Know focuses on the life of a girl in the ninth grade named Sophie. Sophie has broken up with her first boyfriend and is pursuing her classmate, Dylan. The physical attraction between the two is undeniable and sparks fly. "And it's true./ Dylan's kisses/ seem like something/ much better than kissing."

Sones allows the poetry to flow as if it comes directly from Sophie as a diary. It is as a first person not-often-rhyming, free verse narrative. She uses simple words that teenagers would use and that directness helps the language flow so that the words Sones chooses seem more like a teenager's stream of consciousness than an adult putting words to the page. Describing the way her mother's nervous reaction to her dating in "Mom's the Word": "she hovers in the hall/ and keeps wringing her hands,/ like she's scared that/ I'm going to get pregnant or something./ And if I ever did,/ which of course I won't,/ it would serve her right" brings out the rebellious words and emotions of a teenager whose mother, perhaps, stopped parenting too soon. The imagery is dry and caustic, and doused in vindictiveness, but spot on in accuracy.

The text also uses different font styles to illustrate online chatting when Sophie's infatuation with Dylan runs thin, and she is on the prowl for a new, more exciting relationship — online.

What is refreshing about Sophie is that she isn't soulless. She's struggling to balance social expectations with reality, as most teens do, but she also has a good sense of what is right and what is wrong, and she identifies that her parents aren't only not relating to her any more, they also aren't relating to each other. She observes their behaviors and how they often don't make any sense. Along the way she decides to stand up for herself by asserting her independence like when she decides to take herself on a spring break around Boston, her hometown, since her parents had nothing planned for the vacation time.

Throughout the book, readers are taken on a typical roller coaster of the teen years watching Sophie as she engages with friends, a depressed mother, an absent father, and boys. The only illustration used in the book, given its teen audience, is a small cartoon in the lower right-hand pages toward the end  that allow the reader to flip through the pages and see man and a woman holding each other and kissing. It is very indicative of some of the drawing you might find in a journal, but not overwhelming, so it doesn't deter from the poetry.

Sones' ability to juggle the difficulties thrust onto children as they enter the adult world are phenomenal. Her choice to use free verse makes the book an excellent read for teens interested in poetry or those who want a relatable storyline that is also easily read.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults 2002
ALA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
Booklist Editor's Choice
California Collections
Iowa Teen Award 2005
Texas Lone Star State Reading List 2003

From Booklist
"The poetry is never pretentious or difficult; on the contrary, the very short, sometimes rhythmic lines make each page fly. Sophie's voice is colloquial and intimate, and the discoveries she makes are beyond formula, even while they are as sweetly romantic as popular song. A natural for reluctant readers, this will also attract young people who love to read." 

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
Other free verse poetry books by Sonya Sones:

• One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. ISBN 9781442493834
• Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. ISBN 9780064462181
• To Be Perfectly Honest: A Novel Based on an Untrue Story. ISBN 9780689876059

Other poetry books on the teenage experience: 

• Aguado, Bill. Paint Me Like I  Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps. ISBN 97800644723647
• Burg, Ann E. All the Broken Pieces. ISBN 9780545080934
• Franco, Betsy. Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls. ISBN 9780763610357
• Franco, Betsy. You Hear Me: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys. ISBN 97807636115990

In middle school and high school, teens are often told what to write. The population is overrun by typical writing assignments like 5-paragraph essays, research papers and poetry that is meant to emulate authors like Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

But what if teens were welcome to follow Sonya Sones' lead and write a book of stand-alone free verse poems that created a narrative about their own teen experiences? What would it look like? Would it have more illustrations? What ideas about parents, school, dating and identity would they be able to communicate channeling their inner thoughts into a journal-like book? Perhaps one of the strongest things connecting Sophie to the world was her ability to self-reflect, to wonder, to think without any kind of judgment. Would this connection also hold true for real-life teens the way it did for fictional Sophie?