Reviews

Abby's Twin by Ann M. Martin, Hodges Soileau

situationnormal's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

Normally one of the less annoying members of the BSC, Abby really pushed my buttons in this one. How obtuse can one 13-year-old babysitter be? That said, I do enjoy Abby's perspective of the other babysitters--it always feels a little fresher. The B plot with the winter carnival, though, didn't save the main plot. It mostly felt recycled from previous books.

nawarafra's review against another edition

Go to review page

fast-paced

1.0

This book was weird man, I don’t know what else to say. It genuinely pains me to score a BSC book so low, but this one just was not it (which ghostwriter got their hands on this?).

Pros:
  • Abby and Kristy’s dynamic is always fun! It’s always funny to see how Abby describes Kristy while somehow not realizing that they’re eerily similar. Also, this exchange between them:
“It’s me. Come over to my house as fast as you can.” It was Kristy. “I just had a great idea.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was on my way back to bed.”
“See you in five minutes,” she said, hanging up.
  • The b-plot, truly the highlight of the book. I loved all the chapters about the Winter Carnival and it’s always fun when the kids show up. (Although, Kristy wanting the kids to help them earn money for it when the club is organizing for the kids is so funny and it is peak Kristy behaviour.)
  • “Enough with the Snow White songs, already.” - See, Byron gets it. Also, Kristy, you can’t be as insane as Abby in her own book, calm down girl.

Cons:

Literally just the entire a-plot of the book. Abby was infuriating! I get it okay, she’s like 13 and doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions, but her behaviour toward Anna was so bizarre! Anna’s a better person than me because I would not have been nearly as forgiving or understanding.

 

chicafrom3's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

Anna is diagnosed with scoliosis and Abby loses multiple IQ points and all sense that Anna is a separate person while processing it. In the b-plot, the BSC throws a winter carnival. Not one of the better BSC books.

finesilkflower's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

After a routine school screening, Abby and Anna are told to see a doctor for scoliosis testing. It turns out that Abby’s spine curvature is within normal range, but Anna needs to start wearing a corrective brace. Abby can’t stand it, and goes overboard trying to comfort her sister, exclusively in ways that she herself would like but Anna does not: challenging her to video games, buying her sportswear, signing her up for a BSC event. Predictably, Abby and Anna fight, and more predictably, they make up and overtly state the lessons of the book.
There is a subplot where Kristy organizes a Winter Carnival. Temporary panic sets in when there is almost no snow for the carnival, but then there is.

BSC’s health and medical plotlines are always full of interesting details. Learning about various conditions, their treatment, and their effect on the lives of Fictional Girls Like You is interesting to people who don’t have the condition and I imagine to people who do. At their best, medical details are woven in a larger, emotionally nuanced plot, but that is not the case here.

The problem is not with the outline or even the concept. On paper, I can see how this could be done quite well. Abby reacts to physical evidence of the difference between her and her twin by embracing, and overemphasizing, their similarities. A person with a big, loud personality accidentally steamrollers over, and exhausts, a quiet, naturally accommodating person in an attempt to comfort them. I can tell they’re going for these storylines, but it’s so clunky and hamhanded that instead of seeming like the natural conflicts that might easily happen between differently-temperamented twins in a crisis, the events of the story just feel like evidence that Abby is remarkably stupid. She seems to forget differences between herself and Anna that she has known about forever and indeed states in the chapter 2 infodump. And Anna isn’t really passive at all--she plainly states what she wants, Abby just ignores it. It just feels like a boring slog from the first example of Abby obstinately ignoring the advice of everyone from Stacey to her mother to Anna herself, and consulting her own desires instead Anna’s, through the next several million examples.

I criticize BSC books (especially these later ones) for being anvilicious a lot, and there’s an argument to be made that that’s an inappropriate charge to hurl at a children’s book series. But I don’t think it is. There are details of characterization and emotional arc that I didn’t remember from the first time I read some of the early books in this series, but there was plenty of vivid procedural detail, such as the running of the club, that I enjoyed at age 7. Medical PSA books have procedural detail coming out the wazoo, so there’s definitely room for subtlety in the emotional story. Unfortunately, this volume reads more like a picture book--turn the page, “Maybe Anna will like THIS!”--than a chapter book for middle grade readers.

Timing: Mid-winter, after the holidays

Revised Timeline: Early second semester of senior year of college. Of course, Abby acts more like a first-grader here.

bangel_ds's review

Go to review page

emotional inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

sammah's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

Abby can be dull on her own. Add in super boring Anna and this put me to sleep at work today. Well, that and the cold meds I'm on.

xtinamorse's review

Go to review page

Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: https://www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blog/abbys-twin

crashedlanding's review

Go to review page

4.0

This was fun and yet got me worked up a bit too, being able to relate to wanting to help but not knowing how to.

@BSC I bought a ton of these at a $1 Book Charity Drive and now have tons of random BSC novels to get through! Woo, the babysitters club will be taking me down memory lane once again

ssshira's review

Go to review page

1.0

in this book by ghostwriter [a:Suzanne Weyn|99836|Suzanne Weyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225668404p2/99836.jpg], abby and anna both get a referral for scoliosis screenings. abby’s curve is relatively minor, so it doesn’t need correcting, but anna’s is intense, so she needs to get a brace. it’s not a milwaukee brace like [b:Deenie|37735|Deenie|Judy Blume|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348458671s/37735.jpg|2428922] or like joan cusack in sixteen candles; she can wear it under her clothes and no one will really know. anna mostly takes it in stride, especially after she finds out the brace won’t affect her ability to play the violin. abby freaks out though that anna is experiencing something that isn’t shared with abby. abby gets really clingy, constantly trying to do everything for anna and forgetting that anna doesn’t share every single one of her interests. the brace will mean anna has to size up in clothes, so abby gets $200 from her mom to buy anna a lot of new clothes, but she exclusively buys her brightly colored workout clothes that she would NEVER wear. abby even cuts her hair to look more like anna’s (it’s getting a little single white female in here…) and asks anna if she can try on her brace. when anna points out that it was built for her and her alone, abby says that they’re basically the same person. UHHH, okay, abby. whatever you say. finally anna has had enough and asks abby to not come to her last brace-fitting appointment. abby gets butthurt about it, but finally after talking to mary anne, she feels better: mary anne says that she thinks abby is upset that anna is going through something tough and abby can’t fix it and can’t go through it with her. but when abby mentions this to anna, anna points out that abby has horrible asthma and allergies, and anna has felt that way about it before. I think anna kind of gives abby a pass for really awful behavior, but whatever. meanwhile, the bsc host a winter carnival. at first they have to make money for it so they try to shovel driveways in kristy and abby’s neighborhood, but all those rich people have plows they hire, so they make no money. but then they clean off cars and shovel in claudia’s neighborhood and they make TONS of money. then it doesn’t seem like it’s going to snow and the carnival involves a lot of snow activities, so they feel like they have to cancel, but they gave out flyers instead of putting up signs, so they don’t know how they’ll cancel. but then it ends up snowing and the carnival happens. it’s weird how much time is spent on this mundane bsc event logistics plot, but it just goes to show you how repetitive and terrible the main plot is.

highlights:
-claudia is showing some bsc kids how to make snow sculptures in preparation for the carnival, so she makes a snow-stacey. the kids make a snow-dragon behind snow-stacey, looking like it's about to eat her. they leave it up with a sign advertising the carnival. cute!
-anna asks if she can, now that she will have the brace, play the violin. I wish abby were the one experiencing this, because when she got a yes from the doctor, she would definitely say, "well I couldn't before!"
-abby goes to gloriana's for her haircut. this is the shop karen goes to in [b:Karen's Haircut|1212174|Karen's Haircut (Babysitters Little Sister, #8)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181922050s/1212174.jpg|2302793], and anything that makes me think of that book is golden. I mean, look at this cover:


lowlights/nitpicks:
-abby is INFURIATING in this book. she doesn't listen to anna at all. at one point anna is watching a concert on the tv and abby insists that she stop so they can play video games, which anna doesn't enjoy and isn't good at. she says she doesn't like them and abby says, "everyone likes them. if you keep practicing, you'll get the hang of it." SHE ISN’T YOU, ABBY.
-abby even wants to wear anna's brace even though it's built for her body because she wants to know what it's like. this is so so so creepy and so awful.
-it confuses me that abby tries to make anna into her. I understand that she's tired of them being different and wants them to be more similar, but most people would start acting more like their twin, not try to force their twin to act more like them.
-abby ends up buying more than $200 worth of stuff when she goes to buy clothes for anna but just pays the extra with her own money. classic. just like when she's the president and does the same kind of thing in [b:Stacey's Broken Heart|176729|Stacey's Broken Heart (The Baby-Sitters Club, #99)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387742413s/176729.jpg|170751]. how does abby have such a snooty rich kid mentality when she just got rich recently?
-they should have already had scoliosis tests. it should be jessi and mal having them. when I was in middle school (which was when these books were coming out), they screened us in 5th and 6th grade. click here for facts about screening timelines from the scoliosis research society.

claudia outfit:
-"That day she had on multicolored, tie-dyed painter's overalls she'd dyed herself over a blue, hand-beaded, long-sleeved shirt. Five colorful, bead-studded papier-mache bracelets clattered softly on her wirst whenever she moved her arm."

snacks in claudia’s room:
-doritos under the covers on her bed

liannakiwi's review

Go to review page

3.0

(LL)
This book was good at talking about scoliosis, which it is always good to teach kids about conditions they may not learn about in school or see first hand what it’s like to live with scoliosis. However, since we had the book on the Arnold twins, all the lessons in this book are repetitive. That’s why I gave the book three stars.

As an aside: Anna almost never spends time with the BSC so there is no way Stacey would know Anna’s style and pick out clothes Anna would like.
More...