8 /10 1 Votes
4.3/5 Barnes & Noble Publication date 2001 Pages 272 pp OCLC 51733502 Publisher Simon & Schuster | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print Hardback ISBN 978-0-689-85553-5 Originally published 2001 Genre Young adult fiction Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Characters Robin Murphy, Dylan, Sophie, Lou, Chaz Similar Sonya Sones books, Young adult fiction books, American poetry books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What my mother doesn t know by sonya sones
What My Mother Doesn't Know (2001) is a novel in verse by Sonya Sones. The free verse novel follows ninth-grader Sophie Stein as she struggles through the daily grind of being a freshman in high school, her romantic crushes and family life. It has been translated into French, German, Indonesian and Swedish, and published as an audiobook read by Kate Reinders.
Contents
what my mother doesn t know
Plot summary
At the start of the novel, Sophie finds herself dumped by her current Boyfriend Lou, then immediately falls into a new relationship with Dylan, a boy considered the height of masculine beauty by her friends. As they date, Sophie discovers she does not really love or even like Dylan all that much and ends their relationship in favor of not actually liking his personality. She then forms a secret romance with an internet chat-room boy named Chaz.
Before she meets Chaz in person, Sophie discovers he is a pervert and ends the relationship quickly. Now on her own, in real life, she encounters an outcast classmate, Robin Murphy, at the local art museum and is astonished to realize that while he is not physically attractive or liked by her friends, she falls in love with him. The book ends with Sophie choosing to sit with Robin in the cafeteria instead of her friends, knowing that revealing her secret relationship to her friends and classmates would be okay.
The companion book What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know, written from the perspective of Sophie's boyfriend Robin (Murphy), was published in 2007.
Reception
Pages Magazine stated the novel "captures the sweet confusion of being a teen girl in love for the first time. And the second. And the third." School Library Journal said "Sones is a bright, perceptive writer who digs deeply into her protagonist's soul... 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."
Controversy
The novel appears on the ALA’s list of most frequently challenged books in 2004, 2005, and 2011.