When My Sister Started Kissing

Based on the title, you might think this book is about boys... and it is, but really, it is about sisters. Beautiful poetic lines and gorgeous descriptions fill these heartwarming pages with a story to which every girl with a sister just a little bit different than her can relate. Helen Frost is a storytelling genius and I was thrilled with this newest addition to her collection.

it is written beautifully and left me wanting more. definitely for 10 and up. highly recommend it. it has an amazing message and helps get kids ready for teen years

Claire always loved spending summers at her family's lake house. She felt close to her late mother there, but this year is different. Her father and new stepmother Pam have cleared out all of her mother's belongings. They are expecting a baby and for them a new and exciting period has started. Claire hopes to find support with her sister Abi, but Abi has other things on her mind. She has just discovered that boys are liking her back and she regularly sneaks out to be with someone she finds more interesting than her sister. Claire spends a lot of time on her own and keeps having to cover up for Abi. Claire is feeling lonely and left out, but is this really justified or are her own actions also part of the problem? Will her summer be a disaster or will she be able to have fun in a different way by giving new experiences a chance? Claire and Abi were always really close, but Abi is older and she's discovered boys. Pam is someone Abi can learn from, while Claire doesn't want to have anything to do with her. That's a fantastic subject for a story. I could easily feel Claire's pain and frustration. Everything and everyone around her is changing and she desperately wants things to remain the same, because she misses her mother and doesn't want to let go of the past. I loved the way Helen Frost explores her feelings. Claire is more sensitive than her sister and this gives quite a bit of friction, but there's a lot of love as well, which is the first step towards making things right. I love books about siblings and When My Sister Started Kissing is definitely a good one. When My Sister Started Kissing is an impressive story about growing up. I was immediately mesmerized by Helen Frost's beautiful words. Her writing is absolutely stunning. I love stories in verse and I liked that she's given each character she writes about their own form. It brings variety and the structure is clear and interesting. Because of the way she writes her story is deep and meaningful, which is something I loved about it. When My Sister Started Kissing is a gorgeous story about change, grief, hope and happiness. I really enjoyed reading this fantastic book.

In, When my Sister Started Kissing, Helen frost tell us about a 10 year old girl Claire. She has a sister Abby who is 13, and now is starting to notice boys and they are noticing her back. Her mom died when she was young. Every summer they go to their lake house but it was different this time mom stuff we’re gone and her dad was focusing on Pam (her stepmom, who is about to have a baby.) As a middle schooler I found this book very relatable. My brother started liking girls and my family is also busy with work. Helen Frost describes the environment about Claire’s life. I would recommend to 10 through 21 audience who likes romance and a good sister bonding. Quote from the book: “Everyone knows I Love my sister, but I am Still a little sad. I’m not Ready for this boy, talk, or the Way that Abby, one of the youngest teenagers at the beach, fits right in With those girls-and boys. Our Summers here are always family Time. It’s different now.”

When My Sister Started Kissing (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017) is a coming of age story involving two sisters—Claire (10) and Abigail (13). Having lost their mother at a very young age, Claire and Abigail have always been close, and until now, they've always enjoyed their summers together at the family lake house. But this year things are different. Mom's belongings have been replaced by a new stepmom and a baby on the way. Also, Abigail is exploring her identity, her independence, and her budding interest in boys, while Claire is not quite sure what to make of any of it. The novel is insightful and sensitive to the complex nature of family relationships in transition, and sympathetic to the trials of becoming a teenager and the personal growth entailed. If you're familiar with any of Helen Frost's distinctive novels-in-poems, you already know the importance she places on using language and structured form to help convey story. For her, the structure of poetry and the sound of language is a "precise paintbrush" used to illustrate the essence of different characters. For example, in When My Sister Started Kissing, Claire's rhyming quatrains are set against Abi's free verse poems that resemble lightning; Claire's kayak poems show movement through water; and then there's my favorite—the voice of the lake. Lake poems are centered on the page to appear lake-like, but they are also acrostics. Reading down the first letters of each line spells out lines from other poems by William Blake, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, William Stafford, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, and others. According to the "Notes on Form" at the back of the book, they represent the current running through the lake. While novels-in-verse have clearly been gaining momentum in recent years, there are some verse novelists who have been writing narrative poetry well before it became trendy to do so. These are the verse novelists I will return to again and again, and Helen Frost is among them.