Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry » (Reprint)

Bebe Moore Campbell is the author of bestselling adult novels including Brothers and Sisters and What You Owe Me, and won a NAACP Image Award for literature for Your Blues Ain't Like Mine.

Some mornings, Annie's mother's smiles are as bright as sunshine as she makes pancakes for breakfast and helps Annie get ready for school.

But other days, her mother doesn't smile at all and gets very angry. Those days Annie has to be a big girl and make her own breakfast, and even put herself to bed at night. But Annie's grandma helps her remember what to do when her mommy isn't well, and her silly friends are there to cheer her up. And no matter what, Annie knows that even when Mommy is angry on the outside, on the inside she never stops loving her.

Publishers Weekly

In a prefatory note, Campbell (Your Blues Ain't Like Mine) explains that she wrote this book "to address the fears and concerns of children who have a parent who suffers from mental illness." As her insightful, moving tale opens, narrator Annie eats pancakes with her buoyant mother. At school, the African-American girl draws a picture of this breakfast scene: "This is my mommy and me.... We have pancakes inside us and sunshine all around us." That sunlight disappears in an instant when she returns home to a much-altered mother who shouts at her. In a touching scene-made all the more so by Lewis's (The Other Side) accompanying picture of Annie crouched in a corner, behind a closed door-Annie phones her grandmother and tearfully reports on her mother's mood. Her grandmother reassures her that she did nothing wrong, that her mother "hasn't gotten the help she needs." Together Grandma and Annie review clearly well-worn plans for coping with the difficult evening (and morning) ahead. Throughout, Lewis's lifelike artwork underscores the story's intense, real emotions as the paintings creatively manipulate light and shadow as well as juggle interior and exterior views. This book amply fulfills Campbell's stated mission and, while it is likely to spark questions from a more general audience, it is equally likely to invite their compassion. Ages 5-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.