Dream Sister

by Alexandra Whitaker

Skeeter battles to avoid impending disaster when her pen pal Terry, to who she has revealed her deepest secrets--including her fabulous but imaginary love life--writes to say that she is moving to Skeeter's hometown

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

A nomadic up-bringing, traveling through North America and Europe, made Alexandra Whitaker a perpetual ‘new girl’ who developed survival skills of observation and mimicry that would later prove to be useful writing tools. Necessity also made her a keen language learner. She speaks a few languages well, and a few more in a slap-dash way.

Elder daughter of the internationally best-selling writer Trevanian, she collaborated with him on various projects over the years. She has settled down at last in Spain and France, with her British husband, A. N. Kennedy and their daughter. She writes fiction, and runs a one-room hotel for solitary travelers.

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plot
Ann and her little sister do not get along, and she's finally asked to move up into the attic so they are no longer sharing a room. But now her closet is full of half-completed projects that sit in The Pile [saaaaaame]. At school, Ann has no friends; she's small, and with her intelligence she skipped a grade which the other students seem to resent her for.

When a much older new girl starts part way through the year, Ann notices the girl stares at her a lot. After being defended by the girl for skipping school with a boy in class, Ann, Fernando, and Lily become friends [can you tell I forgot their names? nm, found em]. She is very worried that now she has friends, they will leave her behind.

Then, when night comes, and she has a recurring dream that a girl is outside her window, trying to get Ann to follow her to a fair. After finding more about her family, Ann decides this girl must be the older sister who died as a baby. Plus, her friend's psychic mother saw something in Ann that scared the crap out of her. What the heck are her dreams trying to tell her!?

Review
This hardcover book came out the year I was born [1986], and I think I got it in 4th grade--no idea where or why, but it DOES have a shiny, silver Scholastic unicorn name plate with my name on it. I always liked it, the cover with Ann looking out and the girl floating by is pretty, and this book was probably part of the reason I enjoy dream books.

The friend that Ann makes has dark hair, dark eyes, a light accent, and large gold hoop earrings, plus her mother is a fortune teller with an accent and goes by Sister something, and I could never tell if they were supposed to by gypsies or black.

My other reason for liking this book is because the main character's first name is Ann [my middle name], her sister is Isabelle [my cat is Isabella], and her sister's friend is Hilary [my sister's name]. Yeah, Ann's mean to her little sister, but my sister and I were waaayyy worse. Lots of punching, scratching, biting, pushing, etc.

[Lapsed Reader]

Date approximate.

I remember this as depressing, really kind of dark regarding the main character's thoughts about her little sister. It's one of those books whose titles I could never remember and would occasionally for years try to find. There was an Amazon review, presumably by an adult, that described the character very much as I remember her from when I was 9 or so.