by Alison McGhee, Illustrated by Tuan Nini
First sentence: “Dear Brother, I am writing this note of apology from my room, where I have been sent to spend the rest of my life for referring to you as America’s FAmous Nothing.”
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Content: It’s got lots of illustrations and not too many words It’s in the Middle Grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore. I read this book for the Cybils, and this reflects my opinion and not that of the whole panel.

Sister is tired of being the younger sibling. She never gets anything: attention, her way, her desires. Brother is the one who gets what he wants, like a bearded dragon as a pet instead of a dog; or getting to go to sleep away music camp. But Sister learns that maybe a bearded dragon (and Brother) aren’t so bad, and Brother learns that maybe his little sister is okay as well.

This one was… fine. It bothered me that the characters didn’t have names besides “sister” and “brother”; I’m sure it was to make them feel universal, but I just felt like it was stupid. (I suppose I have a thing about calling people by their names..) I did like the Lessons Learned, but there wasn’t much else to the book besides learning lessons. The illustrations were good – it borders on being a graphic novel, but not quite – but there wasn’t much else to it.

I’m sure there is a 3rd grader out there for whom this is their favorite book, and I don’t want to take that away from them. It’s just not for me.