ALA Booklist

Neatnik Olivia introduces her little sister Sophie, a poster child for Slobs of the World, who creates total chaos everywhere she goes. Olivia delivers her lengthy indictment of her sister's habits without heat or even self-righteousness, ending with a bland tally of Sophie's good points and a vague wish that one of these days she'll start to remember to stop forgetting to try NOT to be so super-completely and totally THE MESSIEST. The pictures inject an exuberance that's missing from Viorst's galloping text. Glasser, illustrator of Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman's You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum (1998), draws the great drifts of clutter in precise, hilariously detailed black and white, making Sophie's outlandish dress and huge, wild crown of red hair spring from the pages. A comical, if oddly distant, character portrait.

Horn Book

Olivia, a tidy and precise girl, is saddled with the messiest sister imaginable and gives plenty of colorful examples. Glasser uses a combination of black and white and color to guide the reader's eye through the chaos to the focus of each scene. Olivia and her sister Sophie are endearing characters, but the list of messy tendencies never becomes a story.

Kirkus Reviews

Viorst's tale of two sisters comically captures the vast diversity in personality that can exist between siblings. Olivia, the narrator and older of the two, regales readers with the misadventures of her younger sibling, Sophie. Olivia is neat while Sophie is decidedly not—and therein lies the source of potential discord. Like a seasoned attorney, Olivia presents her case to the reader, offering, albeit unintentionally, one more hilarious tale after another in an attempt to depict Sophie's haphazard existence. A quintessential pre-adolescent, Olivia's diatribe is liberally sprinkled with youthful exuberance and exaggeration, containing fine examples of sibling disdain. "No, I'm NOT a rude person. I would never, ever, EVER call Sophie a pig. I'm only saying that PIGS think Sophie's a pig." While addressing readers in a chummy, just-between-us manner, Olivia's tone comes across rather overbearing and superior. Yet here too Viorst has taken a page from real life, for what older sibling doesn't harbor some feelings of superiority over their hapless younger relations? However, the vivacious Sophie is truly irrepressible, enthusiastically charging forward to embrace life's offerings, and even Olivia ultimately has to acknowledge her younger sister's nobler attributes. Finely detailed with a keen comic undertone, Glasser's drawings are a perfect fit for Viorst's wry tale. Pen-and-ink drawings come to life with vivid splashes of watercolors, which fill in only certain portions of the illustrations. Brimming with an abundance of visual sallies, these pages are as much fun for readers to examine as to hear. While cleaning fanatics will empathize with Olivia, the rest of the population will be longing to make the lively, free-spirited Sophie their new best friend. (Picture book. 5-8)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

The title of this slender tale describes a girl who is as clumsy as she is messy. "Her antics will surely elicit grins and perhaps even giggles from young readers," according to <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW. Ages 4-7.<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC""> (Feb.)

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 3-Olivia emphatically states that her younger sister, Sophie, is the messiest human being around and proceeds to tell of the chaos that her sibling creates. Glasser's pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations are full of inviting detail. They show Sophie's closet contents; a bedroom impassible with toys, clothes, and artistic creations; numerous experimental doll projects gone awry; mishaps at the beach and farm; and always the exuberant Sophie who tries, really tries, to be more like the neat and nearly perfect Olivia. While the younger child works her havoc outside the boundaries of acceptable (and believable) behavior, the narrator hastens to add that dad says that Sophie is smart and funny; their older brother adds that she's great at dancing and puzzles; and mom says that Sophie's really a kind and nice person. It's all pure fun with an undertone of acceptance that's positively reassuring, and maybe even a little bit encouraging, to creative clutzes and anyone else who has ever messed up while messing around.-Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.