Brother Brother, Sister Sister

Tanya, 11-year-old diary-writer and unwilling sister of baby quads, has to help her tired and overstretched parents look after the babies while staying cool in the eyes of her friends, or so she thinks. Eventually, a crisis finds these same friends happy in fact to help her baby-mind.

‘I didn’t have time to think about it all properly. There was too much going on’ Tanya comments – she might be describing the book itself, which is disappointingly unclear in its intention, depending on unlikely responses to the family’s situation, and introducing a confusing range of serious themes which are not properly followed through or resolved. This is a well-worked subject, poorly handled here, though my 11-year-old tester enjoyed it ‘because I like babies and I like diaries’. That about sums it up, really.