From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 10:01:29 -0500

Since I'm the older of two sisters, I can't help but paying attention to stories that reflect that particular relationship. My sentimental favorite is the first book I ever truly read and loved, Dorothy Edwards' My Naughty Little Sister. It begins: "A long time ago when I was a little girl, I had a sister who was littler than me. My little sister had brown eyes and red hair, and a pinkish nose, and she was very, very stubborn."

Now my sister looked nothing like this, but it mattered not a wit. Nor did it matter to that Edwards sisters lived in a house in a pastoral Britain while we lived in a tiny apartment over a bakery (my sister and I slept, believe it or not, in a closet!) so near the train station in Bonn, Germany that the drunks woke us up nightly.

I always show this book to my students at the start of the year to encourage them to tell/write me stories about the first books they loved. Some kids write/tell me about their own naughty siblings without even wanting to read the book while others borrow the book (and always are careful with it knowing its value to me). At any rate, I suspect many of us can't help, but respond to different sibling relationships in books because of our own.

Then there are books I love with sibling relationships that are completely unlike mine. Some favorites off the top of my head include Polly Horvath's The Trolls, Ann Martin's A Corner of the Universe, Jennifer Holm's Our Only May Amelia, and Hilary McKay's Saffy's Angel.

Monica

Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Wed 20 Nov 2002 09:01:29 AM CST