Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager
by Anonymous, Beatrice Sparks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anonymous, Beatrice SparksEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Published: 1998-07-01
ISBN: 0380791412
Number of pages: 256
Reading Level: Young Adult
Publisher: HarperTeen
Book Reviews of Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager
Book Review: Poorly-written propaganda
Summary: 2 Stars
Maybe it's because I'm now past the target age for this book, and because I now know about how Dr. Sparks in all probability just makes up these books instead of using real teen journals, but I didn't believe for one blessed moment that this book was a real teen journal, nor that Annie was a real person. I was a teenager of the Nineties myself, and am a nearly-lifelong journaller, and nothing about Annie (her personality, thought process, writing style, etc.) rang true. She and everyone else in this book come across as one-dimensional stereotypes and clich?s, like they're all characters in some over the top morality play or afterschool special. It's so suspicious how the teens in all of Dr. Sparks's "real-life diaries" have the exact same writing style and moral preachiness, holding rather conservative views in line with her own. I don't begrudge her her sincerely held beliefs even though they're radically different from mine, but it's just morally irresponsible to push these beliefs on impressionable teens by pretending they're from peers instead of some over-the-hill ultra-conservative psychiatrist. There are far better ways to teach teenagers to not do drugs, have unprotected sex at young ages, get eating disorders, have an affair with a teacher, or join a gang than lying to them and trying to scare them straight.
I find it hard to believe that Dr. Sparks is that respected of an adolescent shrink, since she seems so profoundly out of touch with how real teens write, behave, talk, and think. But chances are, if she'd used a real diary from a pregnant teen she had worked with, it wouldn't have had the desired holier than thou moral preachiness, anti-abortion and anti-welfare rants, childish writing style, stereotypical characters, sense of shame and guilt for something like having sex or lying to one's mother, or depiction of all teen moms as terrible parents who are just setting their kids up for a lifetime of problems unless they do the responsible thing and place the babies for adoption. Teenagers are a lot smarter, more mature, articulate, and self-aware than she gives them credit for. Real teen journallers also don't over-analyse everything, use babyish expressions worthy of a six year old, use excessive italics and exclamation points, FREQUENTLY WRITE IN ALL CAPS (those sections were so annoying, irritating, and distrating I found myself just skimming over them), feel guilty for engaging in normal teen behaviors (like going to parties or lying to one's parents about their whereabouts), or apologise for having used the occasional curse word in their own journals. Annie also acts really bipolar, the way she's all happy, excited, and bubbly one moment, then depressed, angry, frustrated, and confused the next. The way she often talks to her journal like it's an actual person, even going so far as having entire back-and-forth conversations, arguments, and tantrums with it, would also seem to suggest a serious mental problem.
While there are a few things about her character that ring true, such as how many teen girls are in abusive relationships and how many young teen moms do feel overwhelmed when the baby arrives, those details are cancelled out by all of the over the top clich?s and stereotypes littered throughout the rest of the book. The "relationship" with Danny develops way too fast, for instance, and she's already acting like he's her soulmate before she even knows his name, and then thinks they have some serious relationship when they've only had a couple of dates and hung out at school a few times. As the relationship wears on, she seems to deliberately put herself in bad situations and do the most foolish things possible, like going back to him after he first tries to rape her and then actually rapes her. I could see if this were a longer-term relationship, but making excuses, blaming herself, and wanting to stay with him for the sake of some minor fling at age fourteen? I never felt anything for anyone in this book, not even at the supposedly dramatic moments, like when Annie stages some elaborate ruse to trick her mother into thinking she was hit by a car instead of raped, or when she tries to abandon her baby. The characters and situations were just too unbelievable.
A real teen journal would also have a lot more mundane chit-chat, like about hanging out with friends, a movie she just saw, schoolwork, that sort of thing, not this obsessive focus on the "problem." And where are all of the details a normal teen girl would make sure to write about, like how she got the birth control pills or just how Danny was roughing her up during sex? How are we supposed to get accurate mental images of these people and things if all we're given are generalities? Unless of course this were deliberately written as a fictional teen journal about a specific issue and not really drawn from the pages of a real teenager's journal, something she never dreamt would be published. I also found it really hard to swallow how Annie is switched to an "unwed mothers' home" in her town. Such places do still exist, but they're far and few between anymore. How convenient one of the few still in existence is in her area. And what American teen of the Nineties would actually use the term "unwed mother"? What is this, the Fifties? Annie also looks down her nose on most of the "unwed mothers" in the school, particularly because they're planning to use welfare. I found the anti-welfare rhetoric to be even more offensive than the anti-abortion rhetoric. (And how is her baby allowed to leave the hospital after only about two weeks when she's two months premature? Don't most babies born at seven months need to spend at least a month in the hospital?)
The only real thing going for this work of fiction are the supplemental sections in the back. There are quizzes to find out if one is in an abusive relationship, a Q&A on birth control and teen pregnancy (which continues with the anti-welfare rhetoric and the downright offensive view that teens are automatically sub-par parents who are putting their kids at risk for all sorts of problems if they don't do adoption), and some resources for things like STDs and rape. Funny how the writing style in this section, as well as in the author's note, is the exact same one used by Annie all throughout the book, down to the FREQUENT CAPS. So it's not totally useless. I don't know whether to feel more sad, amused, or scared that apparently many teen girls believe this book was written by one of their own instead of an elderly shrink pretending to be some whiny immature self-absorbed holier than thou teenager.
Summary of Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager
When Annie discovers she's pregnant by her boyfriend, she's devastated. She has never felt so alone. With no one she can talk to, she pours her heart out to her diary, confiding her feelings of panic, self-doubt, and the desperate hope that some day she can turn her life around. She decides she wants to keep her baby and dreams of loving and caring for this little person. But after the baby is born, it's in her diary that she faces the agonizing question: Can she really raise this child on her own?
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