One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Sones, Sonya. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. ISBN-10: 1416907882, ISBN-13: 9781416907886. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing. 2004.

Summary
Ruby's mom has died. But that's not the only problem: Ruby has to leave her Boston home, her Boston friends and her Boston boyfriend to move across the country to live with her father. Her father is a famous movie star who left Ruby's mom before she was born, and Ruby has turned her grief for her mother to anger toward her father. She's hateful, ungrateful and refuses to show her father any love. But there is more to the story of her father, and it'll take an act of God to help Ruby see that.

Critical Evaluation
Sonya Sones uses epistolary (emails mostly) free verse to tell the story of Ruby. Her mother dies from cancer and she is forced to leave Boston and move to Los Angeles to live with her movie star dad. She's grief-stricken, and funnels that grief to fuel her anger at the dad she never knew because he took off before she was born. She tortures him at every turn—his famous friends, her beautiful room in his mansion, rejecting his endeavors to get to know her. Ruby relies on her emails to her best friend and boyfriend who she left back in Boston, as well as her dead mother and her father's live-in trainer/personal assistant. Young adult readers will side with Ruby over her misery of having to leave her friends, and may understand her anger toward her dad. She's a smart character who tells a great story that twists with an earth-shattering earthquake.

Reader's Annotation
Fifteen year old Ruby has just lost her mom to cancer, and is now living in her movie star dad's Los Angeles mansion—a world away from her best friend and boyfriend she left in Boston. She finds relief in her misery by writing emails to them and even to her dead mother, until an act of God shakes up what she thought she knew.

About the Author
Sonya Sones has spent most of her life drawing, animating or editing something or another. The Boston native was educated at Hampshire college, has taught a Harvard, worked in the film industry as an editor and painted baby clothes for Neiman Marcus stores before enrolling in a poetry class at the University of California-Los Angeles. She had an influential professor who guided her into writing her first book Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy in 1999. In over the last decade, she has written four young adult novels, three short stories and one children's picture book—Violet and Winston—with her husband Bennett Tramer.

In her young adult novels, Sones often incorporates bits and pieces of herself in each book. Inspired by her professor and the actual events surrounding her mentally ill sister, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy was written first (1999). Sones was writing poems about her first love, and then started thinking about all of the "firsts" in a young girl's life, and she used many those thoughts for What My Mother Doesn't Know (2003). Next she incorporated her own story of an East coast girl relocating to the West coast for One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004). What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know (2007) came from the copious amount of letters asking the author for what happened next in Sophie's story. Sones says she wanted to know what happened too, so she wrote the sequel. Sones is currently working on her fifth novel.

Genre
Poetry/Verse
Death/Dying
Adolescence

Challenges
Homosexuality

Curriculum Ties
English: writing a complete story in verse

Booktalking Ideas
How willing would you be to pick up and move across the country just because your mom has died and you're now forced to live in a Los Angeles mansion…
Do you think you can tell a whole story using free verse poetry tucked into emails…

Awards
Tennessee Volunteer State Teen Read Award (2006)
Iowa Golden Apple Teen Read Award (2006)
Rhode Island Teen Book Award (2006)
New Hampshire Isinglass Teen Read Award (2006)
South Carolina Mustang Book Award (2005)
Cuffie Award from Publisher's Weekly for Best Book Title of the Year (2006)
Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association (2005)

… and numerous nominations

Reading Level/Interest Age
Ages 14+

Why I included this title...
Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know was recommended to me, and so I wanted to see if her other books were as good… this one was better!