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?

When Annie discovers she is pregnant, it makes her situation go from bad to worse. Unable to face the fact for months, Annie does everything posible to keep from seeing her boyfriend. When she gets up the guts to tell her boyfriend, she is faced with the horrible truth:he never loved her at all. Annie's mother supports her dission to have her baby. But when Lil'Annie is born, Annie discovers how hard a baby is. She asks her self this question:Can she really raise her baby? This is an exellent book, every girl age 10 and up should read it!


Aaaarrrghh   August 7, 2005
Madisen (Fruita, CO United States)
31 out of 35 found this review helpful

I started reading this book because of the concept. I thought it would be an interesting look into the struggles of teen pregnancy. Unfortuneately, I never even got to that part. Annie's personality is just so annoying that I wanted to scream. For one, she is constantly caught up in a whirlwind of confusion, teen angst, and puppy-dog-ish eagerness, so much so that you want to tell her to take a tranquilizer and calm down. She repeats the sentence "I HAVE to help him be the BEST he can BE!!!" at least three times when writing about her boyfriend, even though it's as plain as daylight to readers that he is a jerk. Plus, she is always arguing with "the diary" (a.k.a. herself), having entire conversations with it...ugh.

The decisions she makes are even more baffling than her bizarre thought process. After being brutally raped by aforementioned boyfriend, does she call the police? Tell an adult? No. Instead, she runs home, and when her mom questions her messed up appearance, she replies (and I quote): "Well, I was jogging, and a car hit me, but please don't call the police, because I wasn't on the sidewalk, and I was kind of running towards it!!!" WTF!?!? Even more crazily, she then says that she's going to stay with her boyfriend, because the rape just proves that he needs someone to help him be the "BEST he can BE!!!" At this point, I tossed the book down in disgust. Next time I want to read about the struggles of teens, I will choose a book with a more sane and mature narrator.


Not a Must-Read   July 19, 2000
25 out of 34 found this review helpful

_Annie's Baby_ is a good read for those teens out there who are having unprotected sex or have the "it'll never happen to me" attitude. Despite this, I was disappointed with this book and wish there was a 2 1/2 - star rating. First of all, at no point throughout the entire book was I at all convinced that this is a real diary. I am a 14-year-old girl and have been keeping a diary for years, and teenagers do not write like this. If Annie was a real teen, she would not apologize for using an occasional swear word in her OWN diary when she is being abused by her "boyfriend" AND THEN FINDS OUT SHE'S PREGNANT! Unless, of course, Annie knew that her supposed diary was being read by millions, or "Annie" is really Dr. Sparks. The whole time I was reading this book, I was trying to convince myself that perhaps, maybe, possibly this is a real diary, only to reach the Question and Answer section of the book and discover that the answers are in the exact same format as the counseling section towards the end of the book!

If one can get past the fact that this is not a real diary and hope that Annie is in fact a real person, or at least a character based on a real person, than one could be impressed with this novel. Though Annie is very naive and stupid at the book's beginning, by its end she has gained amazing strength and finally makes what I feel is definitely the right decision (although, in reality, Annie would have been much more affected by this decision). I do applaud Beatrice Sparks on her attempt to better inform our generation on the consequences of unprotected sex, lying to parents, etc. ... It has obviously had a major, positive impact on the majority of teens who have read it. However, I am not going to tell you this is a must-read.


Rot.   November 12, 2005
Ana (New Jersey)
20 out of 22 found this review helpful

Annie's Baby is, to put it simply, a waste of paper. To begin, I don't believe for an instant that it is THE ACTUAL DIARY of a 14-year-old girl. I myself am a 14-year-old girl, and I have honestly never met a girl my age as immature and ridiculous as "Annie". Words like "kadoodle", "dizzy-fizzy", "billion-zillion-kat-tillion" show either the mental capacity of a six-year-old or an absurd attempt to make the writing sound younger. Annie repeats herself constantly and speaks almost entirely in youth-group cliches.
"Hey, wait.. either he'll like me FOR ME or not at all!!! Right?!"
"Can PLAIN ME possibly be good enough for AWESOME, RADDER-THAN RAD HIM?!"
"I'm going to dedicate my life to helping HIM be the BEST HIM he CAN BE!!!"
and my favourite,
"Did he REALLY MEAN IT when he said 'EVERYONE IS DOING IT'?"
To make it even more unbelievable, she speaks to her diary quite literally as if it were another person -- to the point of having arguments and TANTRUMS with it.
"Annie": "Danny's right; I'm just being a little girl, booby baby boob tube."
"Daisy Diary": "I don't think so."
"Annie": "HA...you CAN'T THINK!! you're just paper."
"Daisy Diary": "AM I? Or am I your conscience?"
Asserting her independance comes down to capslocking at her diary that SHE DOESN'T NEED ITS ADVICE ANYMORE. It is understandable that Ms. Sparks thought using and overusing capital letters, italics and multiple exclamation marks would make this sound authentic, but she does it all wrong. Try reading some of these sentences aloud; they don't line up. No one would speak this way, and no one would write it either. Teenage girls deserve more credit than "Annie" gets for knowing their minds and understanding people and motives and consequences of actions. Even when she lies to her mother, she feels excruciatingly guilty in a way that, honestly, no one feels after the age of eight. Even after it becomes clear to the reader that Danny is gutterscum -- within approximately ten seconds of the introduction of his character -- she continues to insist that he is a beautiful sensitive soul and couldn't possibly have meant to hurt her or use her.
Also! Read the Note from Ms. Sparks at the beginning of the book. Notice how she has patronisingly written in the EXACT tone her protagonist uses throughout the book? So are the supposed-to-be informative Q&A at the end. Hmm.
The writing style of this book was so ridiculous in itself that I hardly reached the point of analysing her actions. Annoying though "Annie" undeniably is, she cannot be faulted for some of the things she does. Many girls do stay in abusive relationships, although it's much more common for to deny the situation altogether than to talk every action to death, and then decide it happened a different way. Many girls are raped or hurt by boyfriends and keep it quiet out of shame or "love" for them.. and so forth. I just think this was a wasted opportunity to bring some of these issues to light in a fresh, not-preachy way.

-- Ana.


Annie's Baby   February 18, 2000
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Annie's Baby is a wonderful example of a 14 year old girl who became pregnant. It shares her deepest agony and pain going on in her life through diary entries. She was a normal teenage girl, leading a normal teenage life, with normal teenage friends, until the day she met Danny. He was wonderful to her, everything that a young lady would like. He fooled her shamelessly, tricking her into loving him and not being able to live without him. This story tells in great detail the ways she fought out her life through stress and writing. I recommend this book to any teenagers, especially those who might be possibly going through this trauma. You will appreciate it greatly.