What My Mother Doesn't Know

Sones, Sonya. 2001. What My Mother Doesn't Know. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 978-0689855535

Plot Summary:

Sophie is a teenage girl. She's slightly boy crazy, she's a little confused, and she's torn between her two best friends and her heart. What My Mother Doesn't Know is a touching look at the life of a typical teenage girl who is trying to make sense of her changing emotions and view on what love really is. What separates this story from countless others with the same theme and subject matter is the storytelling. Sonya Sones writes Sophie's story in verse, and nearly every page is a new free verse, narrative poem relating Sophie's thoughts and feelings with the events occurring at that time.

Critical Analysis:

Many adults reading What My Mother Doesn't Know will see themselves as a teenager in Sophie just as teenagers reading the book today will identify with Sophie. Sones uses the verse novel technique to draw readers into Sophie's story with emotionally charged language, strong imagery, and fairly short poems that quickly give readers an insight into Sophie. The free verse poems reflect the confusion Sophie feels as she tries to sort through her lessening attraction to her boyfriend and her growing attraction to a boy no one at school would ever think of dating all while chatting online with another boy. It is not difficult to see Sophie (or yourself as a teenager) breaking up with her boyfriend, feel the terror she feels as she struggles to tell her friends about her new boyfriend, or feel and see the horror as Sophie finds out what the mysterious Chaz (her online friend) does in libraries. The verse novel makes these experiences more captivating for the reader because there is no extraneous language or information as there can be in traditional novels. The free verse poems get right to the point of Sophie's experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

Another way Sones grabs the reader and makes the novel more personal is once Sophie begins to date the new boy in her life and realizes how much she cares for him, a cartoon-like doodle appears in the bottom corner of the book pages. The doodle builds upon itself and becomes a flip-art picture of a man and woman (in old-fashioned looking dress) kissing. As a teacher, I often see these little drawings in my high school students' in-class journals. It is one more mark of personality that not only draws the reader more into Sophie's world, but it makes the book seem less like a commercial work of fiction and more like a personal journal or diary.

Teenagers today will identify with Sophie and her use technology as a means of communicating with her friends and strangers alike since most of them use text messaging, Facebook, and Tumblr as a primary way of communication. My seventeen-year-old sister-in-law is rarely without her iPhone where she constantly chats with her friends through text messaging and posts updates for her friends to read to her Tumblr. Teenagers will also identify with the emotions Sones so compellingly details in Sophie as all teenagers experience the highs of love and lows of life that Sophie goes through in these pages. The verse novel style will also keep their attention by allowing them to read Sophie's thoughts in short bursts of information. Also, Sones uses the verse novel style to create a more personal mood allowing teenage readers to feel like Sophie could be any girl they know.

Personal Note:

When I told my teenaged sister-in-law that I choose this book from our list to read she told me over and over that I would love the book, go buy the sequel to it, and that I would see myself as a teenager in Sophie. She was right, and this is a book that will be added to my in-class library as soon as school starts back in August.

Review Excerpts:

"A story written in poetry form. Sophie is happily dating Dylan, "until he's practically glued himself to my side." Then she falls for cyberboy ("if I could marry a font/I'd marry his"). Imagine her surprise when he becomes downright scary. In the satisfying ending, Sophie finds the perfect boyfriend-someone she's known all along...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 (parents having nuclear meltdowns, meeting a boyfriend's parents, crying for no apparent reason)...Sones's book makes these often-difficult years a little more livable by making them real, normal, and OK." -- School Library Journal, Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI

"In a fast, funny, touching book, Sones uses the same simple, first-person poetic narrative she used in Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (1999), but this story isn't about family anguish; it's about the joy and surprise of falling in love...The poetry is never pretentious or difficult... 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." --Booklist, Hazel Rochman

Awards:

International Reading Association Young Adult's Choice 2003
ALA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers 2002
ALA Best Book for Young Adults 2002
Booklist Editor's Choice 2001

Connections:

After reading What My Mother Doesn't Know, one of the natural questions is "What happens with Sophie and Robin?" Sonya Sones answers that question in her 2008 free verse novel What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know, written from Robin's perspective as a teenage boy who is ridiculed by his classmates. While boys may not identify as easily with Sophie, they might identify more with Robin and his story.

Readers who enjoy Sones verse novel style of writing but aren't necessarily interested in reading more about Sophie and Robin should go to the author's website (http://www.sonyasones.com/) and read more about her novels or look for suggestions of what to read next.

Teachers could use excerpts of the novel to teach narrative, free verse poetry. Students could relate an experience of their own in a free verse poem, or students could keep a journal over a set time period in free verse poems in imitation of Sophie and Sones' writing style.