Reviews

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry by Bebe Moore Campbell

melodyseestrees's review

emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

It is important to note that this is supposed to be a children's book to help emphasize how they should handle another person's feelings or emotional state. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Emotional abuse and Abandonment

There is no concrete evidence that it is intended for emotional abuse and abandonment to be the hinted relationship between mother and child however the images and something the mother says to the child, her friends, and the neighbors can trigger someone sensitive to the tagged content.

Mother yells at child to get in the house. She also yells to the neighbor and the waiting friend group that the daughter doesn't have time to talk to them. The daughter calls her grandmother because she is scared and the grandmother walks her through what to do. The next day the daughter gets herself ready for school and makes breakfast completely unaided or watched by the mother, which is a polar opposite to the first breakfast we read about where the mother is extensively involved in the entire process. The daughter's friends had worked out a way for the daughter to stay with them.

snazel's review

Oof. Filling a necessary niche— talking to kids who have parents (and specifically single parents) with untreated bipolar disorder— but this one is tough. It's trying hard to find positive things, and showing how to make your own support structure, but this little girl is in a tough situation. Definitely a teaching/therapy book, not a general-audience situation.

val_halla's review

5.0

This book has helped us so much in explaining a mentally ill parent's behavior to foster/adoptive kids. The story moves a little slowly, but I give it 5 stars because it's pretty much the only book of its kind. It emphasizes that mental instability is not the child's fault, and does not use specific diagnoses or terminology (the mom in the story behaves like someone with bipolar or schizophrenia but these are not mentioned).