I'm Not Telling

The Birthday Girls #1

by Jean Thesman

Meeting at a birthday party for all the kids born on the same day and in the same hospital, Jill, Ceegee, and Nancy become fast friends, but the arrival of another party guest puts a damper on their high spirits.

122 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1992

About the author

Jean Thesman was a widely read and award-winning American author known for her young adult fiction, with a career spanning over 25 years. Her novels often explored themes of family, identity, and belonging, frequently featuring heroines who find their place in the world by uncovering truths about their families and forming chosen connections. “I loved telling the story,” she once wrote, “because I really believed that families were made up of the people you wanted, not the people you were stuck with.”
Born with a passion for storytelling and literacy, she learned to read before starting school and recalled having to wait until she was six years old before being allowed her first library card. Throughout her career, she authored around 40 books, most under her own name but a few under the pseudonym T.J. Bradstreet.
Thesman published a wide range of novels for teens and middle-grade readers, including stand-alone works such as The Rain Catchers, Calling the Swan, and Cattail Moon, as well as series like The Whitney Cousins, The Birthday Girls, and The Elliott Cousins. Her lyrical style, emotional depth, and strong female characters earned her a loyal readership. Notable works like The Ornament Tree and In the House of the Queen’s Beasts remain particularly admired for their nuanced storytelling and emotional resonance.
She was a longtime resident of Washington state and an active member of The Authors Guild and the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Jean Thesman passed away in 2016 at the age of 86, leaving behind a significant legacy in young adult literature.

Reviews

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oi. This book. This book, why? WHY, book, WHY?

The Birthday Girls is a strange set up for a series considering these girls have never met before their ill-fated birthday party and then don't speak to one another until the very end of the book, but the back of the books makes it seem like they've bonded and become best friends or something. Which, btw, totally not the case.

Instead, Ceegee's mother gets the idea to throw a birthday party for all the babies born on the same day at the same hospital as a sort of reunion. Five other families show up to the party and one of them is a mother/daughter duo who go out of their way to be nasty and cruel to everyone at the party. The rest of the book deals with the fallout of their incredible rudeness.

In Jill's book, I'm Not Telling, Jill finds out that her uncle Duffy, whom she adores and admires and so does everyone else because he's the fun uncle, went to jail the day she was born. She spends the rest of the book bemoaning that fact and wondering how he could be so dumb and why is he ruining her life with this one stint in jail and oh god, it's been awhile since I wanted to tell a fictional character to shut up but yeah. Jill? He went to jail because he parked in the wrong spot and then got sassy with the officer who ticketed him. (Important life lesson there about not provoking cops.)

She's being blackmailed by her lockermate and rude Maggie's cousin and will not believe her friend who tells her NO ONE CARES ABOUT HER UNCLE. No one. At twelve, would you care that some random kid's uncle went to jail twelve years ago? I mean, once you found out it wasn't for anything interesting? I'm thinking probably not. But because he's a doctor and Jill's so insecure about middle school already, she's in a panic and it's just... ugh.

I liked other things about the book and the cover's pretty, so it gets two stars since I'm not the intended audience and didn't read it when I was.