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The Birthday Girls #2
Who Am I, Anyway?
Not even her happiness at meeting two new friends, Ceegee and Jill, at the communal birthday party can keep Nancy from being crushed when she accidentally overhears a secret from her own past.
128 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1992
About the author
Jean Thesman
44 books48 followersJean 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 1, 2015
The Birthday Girls is a strange series. It begins with each girl (Jill, Ceegee, and Nancy for this book) going to a birthday party for all the kids born in the same hospital on the same day twelve years ago. At the party, one of the kids is a brat and insults everyone, and the rest of each book deals with the fallout of that injury.
In Nancy's case, she finds out that her parents aren't who she thinks they are. Well, her mother anyway. It turns out that Nancy's birth mother died after giving birth to Nancy and that a couple of years later, her mother's sister, Sharon, married Nancy's father and the two just never found the time to tell Nancy the whole story.
Unfortunately for them, they waited a little too long since Nancy started learning a bit about genetics and realized that her eye color meant that she wasn't her parent's biological daughter. Well, half right, kiddo.
Anyway, Who Am I, Anyway? gets a star knocked off for the repeated use of "real mother" which feels like it's something that even in 1992 might not have been the best way to phrase things. Otherwise, it's an interesting look at how it feels to be caught up in being so hurt and mad at someone and yet still wanting to reach out but feeling unable to do so, and consistently making the choice to hurt someone else in an effort to make your own pain go away.
In Nancy's case, she finds out that her parents aren't who she thinks they are. Well, her mother anyway. It turns out that Nancy's birth mother died after giving birth to Nancy and that a couple of years later, her mother's sister, Sharon, married Nancy's father and the two just never found the time to tell Nancy the whole story.
Unfortunately for them, they waited a little too long since Nancy started learning a bit about genetics and realized that her eye color meant that she wasn't her parent's biological daughter. Well, half right, kiddo.
Anyway, Who Am I, Anyway? gets a star knocked off for the repeated use of "real mother" which feels like it's something that even in 1992 might not have been the best way to phrase things. Otherwise, it's an interesting look at how it feels to be caught up in being so hurt and mad at someone and yet still wanting to reach out but feeling unable to do so, and consistently making the choice to hurt someone else in an effort to make your own pain go away.
Displaying 1 of 1 review