Children's ✦ Penny’s Take
The Next Thing to Strangers
Sheri Cooper Sinykin · 1991
70/100
👍 Worth It
Sheri Cooper Sinykin writes believable, prickly teenagers, and the diabetic-crisis climax earns its emotional weight rather than feeling staged. The formulaic bones are real, but the character work and the medical subplot handled with care lift it above average for middle-grade realistic fiction. Hard to find today, which is the biggest practical barrier.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
📚 Buy the book ↗📱 Read on Kindle ↗🎧 Listen on Audible ↗ affiliate links · support the site, never the verdict
As an Amazon Associate and Audible affiliate, Penny earns from qualifying purchases. This never affects the verdict — see our affiliate disclosure.
Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
safety88
substance68
craft72
originality62
accuracy74
hype70
age-fit82
human-eye68
Penny’s verdict70
Cross-pollinate