Don't Think Twice

by Ruth Pennebaker

Book Overview

At age 17, the last place Anne pictured herself was a home for unwed mothers. But it's 1967, and she is expected to quietly have her baby and give it up for adoption. Trying to forget where she is,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805067299
• ISBN13: 9780805067293
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Girl Interrupted, Maternity style

This book was excellent. I laughed out loud several times. It took me right back to 1967, what it must have been like to be a young pregnant girl back then, when everyone was so intolerant. The characters were interesting. Anne was hilarious. The end was very touching and moving. The only thing that made me nervous was when they all got drunk, but then I realized no one back then knew that alcohol will hurt an unborn baby. This book would be a really great movie.

Don't Think Twice to Read!!!!

I think Ruth Pennebaker, the author of Don't Think Twice, did a good job portraying a pregnant teenager's experience. She even enphasized how people reacted to something like that from back in the sixties, which is when the story took place. It was a great book. Anne is a seventeen-year-old teenager who pregnant after meeting who she was the love of her life. Her family couldn't bare the embarrassment of having a young pregnant daughter so they sent her away to an unwed mother's home. The setting of the book mostly took place in Texas at the home Anne was sent to. She spent most of her pregnancy there till the time she gave birth. Her life changed a lot at the home. Her horomones were raging and she had a different out look on everything. She really had time to evaluate herself and the people around her. Anne spent most of her time around the girls in the home. She learns about their experiences. While reading the book you see Anne and the girls learn what it's like to be out casts. They have to wear fake wedding rings to pose as married women and have people stare at them as if they were aliens, because they have to travel in a group. Throughout the book Annehas to make the decision of whether or not to give up her baby for adoption. If you think about it, giving up something that spent nine months in you is hard, so the ending is definitely something to look foward to. In the book Anne lashes out on people when she's in her moods. It's one of those stories where you laugh out loud when she pokes fun at her airhead sister, but you want to cry when one of the girls tells her story about how she was raped. It is a book filled with many emotions and it has a good moral as well. I would recommend it to everyone.

Hey you! Buy this book!

Okay, okay, okay. I'm not an editor. I don't know the author. All I know is what I like. And I either like it or I don't. Well, as soon as I picked up this book, I couldn't put it down. It was just so... it was sad, yeah and funny and heart-breaking, so so real. Okay, the main character Anne, lived in like 1967 but she reminded me so much of myself... without the pregnant part. It was honest and believable. Very sad, but I liked it. And I didn't even realize it would be so hard to give up a baby. So, read it

Moving and Heartbreaking

Sarcastic, teenage and pregnant Anne renders an honest, touching and tear-jerking portrayal of the brutal realities of teenage relashionships and pregnancy. Anne, the unrequited lover of Jake, her boyfriend who impregnates and then breaks up with her, is shunned from her family and sent to a home for pregnant teenagers. Bitter and depressed, she narrates sarcastically and honestly, profoundly capturing human emotion and pain. Unwillignly, she becomes attached to her companions at the pregnant home, and together they struggle through their deeply painful issues. By the end of the novel, Anne is not healed and perfect, but she has made a remarkable journey of self awareness that is ironically relatable. I am an avid reader who devours on average 5 books a week. That in mind, now take into consideration this was truly one of the best books I have ever read. It is entertaining, elegantly crafted, has funny, relatable characters, a sense of realism... and above all, Anne's strong voice conveys an amazing story of self awareness and overcoming hardships.

Great first novel

Don't Think Twice is a fine debut novel by Ruth Pennebaker. Pennebaker's narrator Anne Harper leads the reader through her weeks spent at a home for unwed mothers with a razor-sharp sarcastic wit and an increasing self-awareness. The cast of supporting characters allows Pennebaker to show teen pregnancy and its many effects, and the setting in the late sixties lets the reader know both how far we've come and how little we've progressed from the idea that an unwanted pregnancy is entirely the girl's responsibility.