Twinnies by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter
Rating: 3.5 stars
Twins! Double the fun! If you know someone in your life who has them (maybe you) you would appreciate some of the images and sentences from this book. We have twin nieces, so I have a special spot in my heart not just for twins, but for their parents. Especially that tough first year.
The annoyed-looking big sister on the cover over there is, as you'd expect, annoyed to have not just one but two little sisters. She is grumpy throughout the whole story and complains to anyone and everyone that "the worst thing is that there are two of them." And they take up too much space in her bedroom, in the kitchen, and in their lives. Her mother admits she feels "truly overwhelmed"--yup, I've seen the real-life images from the book at my sister's house, and I'm here to say that that is one accurate statement. The annoyed big sister begrudgingly helps out, though she does switch socks on the twins just to be funny.
At the end, the neighbor complains that the twins woke her up at night with their screaming and crying. The big sister gets her feathers ruffled: "Who does she think she is, picking on our twinnies?" So the next night, when the babies inevitably wake and cry, the exhausted parents take them into their fluffy bed with them. The big sister shows up, too, and whispers if there is room for her. Her dad assures her there is, and she squeezes in between her two sisters. They are soft on either side of her; she thinks "if there was only one, I'd feel lopsided." She drifts to sleep holding their toes and finally wipes the annoyed look off her face and replaces it with a contented smile.
It's pretty understandable that a big sister would feel like this, so I have to forgive some of Eve Bunting's character's disgust with her baby sisters. I wish she'd have changed some of the text to make it a bit more positive, but it ends so well and the images are so true to life that it definitely has many redeeming qualities.
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