Sassy #1: Little Sister Is Not My Name [Hardcover]

Sharon Draper (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 7 and up | Grade Level: 2 and up | Series: Sassy

New York Times bestselling author Sharon Draper delivers a fresh, funny series starring oh-so-fabulous Sassy!


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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2–4—Nine-year-old Sassy usually is the one who gets stuck with the last piece of chicken or the last choice of jelly beans in the bowl because she is the youngest and smallest member of the Sanford clan. Her stature has earned her the nickname Little Sister, much to her chagrin. Sassy feels there's a special sparkly part hiding deep within her; it just needs some help to shine through. At times the story seems a little too pat and clichéd. It's what's inside that counts, Grammy tells the child. The chapter book is short on plot and conflict, but is full of strong, believable characters. Draper is at her best when describing people. "Daddy says I have a Krispy Kreme face, warm and sweet, but who wants to look like a doughnut?" Readers will get a kick out of some of the vignettes as when Sassy's classmate gets his head stuck between the rungs of a chair or when her brother's bladder is about to burst on the elevator. A likable enough story, but not an essential purchase.—Beth Cuddy, Seward Elementary School, Auburn, NY
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From Booklist

Sassy finds her school uniform boring, and she loves shopping at the mall, dressing up, and eating out at fancy places. As the youngest in her African American family, she hates being called Little Sister, but it is hard to get her busy parents to hear her. In fact, she feels pretty invisible at home, except when her beloved Grammy, who first turned her on to reading, comes to visit and performs as a professional storyteller in Sassy’s school. Draper is an award-winning teacher and writer, and the classroom scenes, including the teacher’s mistakes, are as much fun as the family uproar. Told in Sassy’s lively voice, this first title in the new Sassy series is more than a situation, and in the story’s dramatic climax, it is the smallest kid who saves the day. Young grade-schoolers will eagerly wait for more about resourceful, “sparky” Sassy and her search for herself. Grades 2-4. --Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 7 and up
  
• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press (March 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0545071518
• ISBN-13: 978-0545071512
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #162,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sharon Draper is a two-time Coretta Scott King Award-winning author, most recently for Copper Sun, and previously for Forged by Fire. She's also the recipient of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for Tears of a Tiger and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor for The Battle of Jericho and November Blues. Her other books include Romiette and Julio, Darkness Before Dawn, and Double Dutch. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught high school English for twenty-five years. She's a popular conference speaker, addressing educational and literary groups both nationally and internationally.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whether It is Magical or Not, Her Story Most Definitely Is, June 3, 2009

By 

A Customer (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sassy #1: Little Sister Is Not My Name (Hardcover)

Sassy Simone Sanford is only nine years old, but that doesn't stop her from resenting the fact that her glamorous 16-year-old sister Sadora and her chowhound 12-year-old brother Savin call her "Little Sister." Even her parents are guilty of this. The reality is that she is little --- teeny-tiny to be exact.

Sassy lives up to her real name. She has to wear a boring blue and white uniform to school but jazzes herself up with glitter polish, shiny lip gloss and her fabulous, magical Sassy Sack. Her grandmother made the handbag especially for her. It's shimmery-shiny and sparkly, all purple, silver, pink and magenta, with buttons, compartments and zippers galore. Sassy keeps that bag filled. She not only has items you might expect a fourth-grade girl to carry, such as stickers and hair doo-dads, lotion and nail polish, she also stocks the Sassy Sack with the most unexpected objects --- things that just seem to come in handy during the most unusual circumstances.

The other characters in the story don't quite fit the expected mold and are all the better for it. Sassy's dad is a teacher who loves his wife's cooking a bit too much, her mother is an executive who works in a very fancy office building, and her grandmother is a famous storyteller who has performed in Africa and the White House.

Sassy has tons of friends; she entertains them by telling how it would be if she were in charge of the school dress code and other items of school business. Mondays would be strawberry days, for example. Everyone would wear pink (boys, too!). Each student would get pink bubble gum for the mandatory bubble-blowing contest. The cafeteria would serve up strawberry jelly doughnuts and pink lemonade.

School is the source of adventures that are relayed with great good humor. When a boy gets his head stuck in his chair, a student who wants to be a nurse covers the back half of him with his jacket. Sassy confides that poor Travis "looks like a horse with a blanket on his back, ready to go to the barn." She pulls a few goodies out of her bottomless Sassy Sack to soothe the victim, sharing some tropical fruit Lifesavers and cooling him down with a small battery-run fan. And when her teacher's camera runs out of film, Sassy pulls out a disposable camera. The book's eventual culminating adventure involves Sassy's family and is the perfect, fitting climax to her story.

It is such a refreshing delight to read of an angstless girl with many friends and a warm and loving family. Sassy has major attitude, but it's never of the mean-girl variety. She has lots of self-confidence and an inviting, upbeat personality --- and yet she manages to be a complex, fully-formed character who tells a good story. Sassy has some insights on adults that are hilarious and right-on (for example, her utter scorn that her mother believes fourth-grade girls are too young to be interested in boys). Her Sassy Sack is a great nearly/definitely/maybe/almost magical embellishment on the order of Mary Poppins's carpet bag. Whether it is magical or not, her story most definitely is.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, July 3, 2011

By 

Sweetpea - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sassy #1: Little Sister Is Not My Name (Hardcover)

My daugther have to read 2 books for school and Sassy:Little Sister Is Not My Name is one of the books she decide to read. She enjoyed the book so much that now she wants all the Sassy's book. So now I'm on the hunt for more Sassy's books.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hit and miss, October 5, 2009

By 

Liz W. "villagebookreview" (Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sassy #1: Little Sister Is Not My Name (Hardcover)

Nine-year-old, pint-sized Sassy has big problems. As the youngest (and smallest) of three children, she is so short that she can't reach things on high shelves without difficulty. Not only that, but her well-meaning family can't seem to remember how much she hates the nickname "Little Sister." It is only after her family is stuck in an elevator between floors, and she is the only one small enough to slip through the doors to go for help, that she feels that she has proved her worth. Yet Draper's otherwise admirable attempt to buoy the self-image of horizontally challenged children is sadly undermined by the glittery, brand-naming gusto of its own protagonist. Armed with her fashionably decorated "Sassy Sack," a combination backpack/emergency kit that seems to contain everything but a cardiac defibrillator, the self-assured Sassy wins the respect of both teachers and classmates for always having the right supplies at the right time. With more fashion-sense and admirers than the average third-grader, Sassy has little else to recommend her to the position of underdog. Nevertheless, the "wish-fulfillment" quality of the story, bound in a sparkly cover that features its protagonist flanked by her culturally diverse array of friends, should appeal to most nine-year-old girls.