Stepsisters, Sweet Valley High #93

As with some other of the Sweet Valley High series this one has its own message and that relates how to people of different races can get along and thrive.

Annie's mother is a catalog model. Her mother has met a photographer and they both have fallen in love. The photographer also has a daughter. Annie and her mother are white while the photographer and his daughter are black and this sets the tone for the entire book.

Annie worries about how her friends will react to her having a black stepsister and how Cheryl, the stepsister, will react moving from New York to Sweet Valley which most of its population is white.

Annie does have a couple of black friends and a couple of Hispanic friends.

An interesting statement in the book is '...black people and white people often have distorted images of each other.'

Annie has major problems in figuring out just how to introduce Cheryl to her friends. There's also a girl's sorority that she wonders if it would be open to a black girl.

(If you look at some older high school yearbooks you will probably find sororities and fraternities which are completely divided by race).

Cheryl has problems with Annie's handling of how she tries to bring Cheryl into her group of friends and Cheryl says '...black people are supposed to be grateful to white people for trying to turn them into white people.'

The solution is very simple. Talk to each other. Don't make assumptions of what the other party wants. Just talk to each other.

A very good book with a very good message.