Customer Reviews

Sisters/Hermanas

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read this book because it was assigned to my son's 7th grade class. To him it was just another reading assignment, but I couldn't put it down. Sisters/Hermanas is a fascinating look inside the minds of two 14 year old girls, both striving desperately to market themselves in a cynical adult world where only appearances count. Both girls are despised "types" - Rosa a prostitute, Traci a nearly mindless puppet of her ambitious, gold-digging mother - but in describing the minutiae of the girls' lives Paulsen helps us see their confusion and vulnerability and the way each is trapped in her role. The story builds to a climactic confrontation in a shopping mall and then ends abruptly. If you have read Paulsen's novels about boys (e.g. The Island, Brian's Winter, Canyons) you may expect a coming of age story here, in which the protagonists learn, grow, and take command of their lives. Paulsen breaks off the story before this can happen, leaving it up to the reader's imagination, along with the depressing possibility that nothing at all will happen and that both girls will remain trapped forever. This book cries out for a sequel - or even better, multiple sequels describing different outcomes, as Paulsen wrote for Hatchet.

The key to the set-up of the dual language edition, for me, was reading it, juxtapositioned, in the two languages. The translator uses quite a few slang words in Spanish and catches the nuances of the story in the language beautifully. I probably would have been very dissapointed if I could only read one side of the story (one language or the other, but not both). It is the juxtaposition, the contrasting of the stories in BOTH languages that brings out the nuances of beauty. It's like this story was MEANT to be set this way. If you can't read it in both langauges (and it is really easy to read in Spanish, due to Paulsen's style and the translator's keeping to it), you probably won't like it as much as I did.

Lo clave, para mi, fue que yo podía leer la novela en los dos idiomas. Es la yuxtaposición de los dos cuentos, los detalles del idioma contado por dos jovenes que sea lo importante. El cuento tenía que estar traducido así. Si puedes leerla en los dos idiomas, creo que te va a ver lo que veía yo: una obra maestra.

This book is great! I liked the short excerpts from each girl's day. Having the excerpts short and switching from one girl to the other made clear the similarities. I liked the theme of the destructiveness of obsession with beauty and youth. The obsession is so prevalent in our culture and in this book you can see the horrible damage it can do to young women. It is great this is a bilingual book. I would have been most impressed if Gary Paulsen had actually written it in both languages, alas, he did not. But he had a wonderful idea though. My only problem was with Traci recognizing herself in Rosa. Realistically, I do not think that would have happened. Although Traci going along with her mother would have.

The one thing that I noticed right away about this book is that it was very short. I found it enjoyable and interesting, but I had some questions about it after I finished it. I think that the author should have expanded the story a little more and have it make a little more sense. I didn't quite get why Traci thought that they were "the same and meant for each other". I just didn't get it. I think that he needed to go and explain it a little more.

The book is a series of concise scenes showing one day in the lives of two 14-year old girls living their lives in similar ways despite the fact that they are from different worlds. Traci is focused on becoming a member of the elite, the cheerleading squad. Rosa is interested only in surviving, day by day, doing whatever is required to keep her alive.

The contrast between the two lives of the girls in this story becomes the similarity that makes them "Sisters/Hermanas."

I liked the book because it was short yet moved me in a way I would never have expected. I put down the book asking myself "What prejudices do I hold against other people that are really the things that tie us together?" This book can make students think about how they feel and may intrigue reluctant readers. It may also be very useful in the bilingual classroom because the book is written in both Spanish and English.

Gary Paulsen has never hesitated to challenge his two audiences, the children for whom his books are written and the parents who buy and read them. Themes of abuse, alcoholism, emotional neglect, violence, and sexuality pop up even in Paulsen's fantasies of impossible adventure, such as his very popular Hatchet series.

Sisters/Hermanas, published as a bi-lingual novella, is an extremely serious, provocative, angry book. I've read all the previous reviews of it here on amazon and, to be honest, I'm suprised at how little controversy is expressed. Perhaps Paulsen readers are already a self-selected market. The two sisters of the title are a wealthy white girl and an impoverished Latina, both 14 years old. The Latina is a victim of both her poverty and her budding sexual attractiveness; she becomes a child prostitute. The white girl is being groomed by her ambitious mother as a style-and-beauty obsessed social parasite. Both girls are as much predators-in-the-making as victims of society's objectification of feminine beauty.

I very much doubt that most American parents would be comfortable with this book if they chose to read it before offering it to their daughters. It's a harsh, hostile depiction of femininity. Paulsen has shown a strain of misogyny in many of his books. His boy characters are all fun-loving rascals, sound at heart, but his girl characters tend to be alienating. This is his one huge failing as a writer. He has almost compulsively revealed something of his personal agony at having been a child abandoned by his mother. The 'mothers' in his books are straight out of the Brothers Grimm. Nevertheless, this is a powerful little book, as thought-provoking as any 'adult' book of the same scope. In all honesty, it's obviously written as a challenge to the sisterhood of privileged white girls to recognize their commonalities with the underprivileged brown girls, those who are unlikely to have parents who buy books for them or read to them. Read it, Paulsen says, and look in the mirror.

I expected more from a top notch writer like Paulsen. Whilehedoes draw the characters in depth, engaging the reader, the abruptending severs the connection which has been established. He points a finger at the shallowness of a culture which is based on youth and beauty, admittedly fleeting virtues, but it is a brief, cursory glance. It's unsettling that the female characters apparantly lack the necessary attributes to succeed, unlike his male characters who valiantly, intellegently, and wonderfully overcome insurmountable obstacles. Although this book has been highly praised, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Sisters is just great. It juxtaposes two girls; one is a poor Mexican teenage prostitute, the other an American cheerleader. Their contrast is striking. Finally, they meet. Are they going to help each other? Read the novel, you won't regret it.

This book are a educational and real. This book talk about the younger's dream, because they don't have school or can't go to school because they don't are resident or citizen, and need to work for send money to their family. Some of this people came to U.S.A. because they don't have support on the family,and they don't have money for education, food, rent, dresses they have only one way is work on fiels but some of the supervisors dont't like work with young people, in to much job's are the same problem. The government don't have programs for this people they only work on the prostitution, because on this kind of job want to young people don't matter boy's or girl's.
I know some times the mother's work very hard for their kida can study,it's fine but a don't like when the mother are very stronger, because kids can't play, see television or due any other activity, and they grew up very fast.

I bought this book but the story was way to short. I thought it would take me an hour or so to read but I was finished in about 15 minutes. I thought the ending was terrible. How could a story ever end the way this one did. Unless you get this book for free, don't even bother to pay for it. It was money wasted.