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