When I was nine, my parents decided to give us the good life in the suburbs. Which meant I was going to have my own room. Which meant I wouldn’t share with my brothers anymore. Which meant I spent the entire first night in my expensive new bed crying. My life was and has been largely defined by being the sister of my brothers. I desperately wanted a little sister until I became familiar with some of my friends’ sisters and realized that being the only girl isn’t so bad. So, I understood the dynamics when I made my oldest a big sister by giving her a brother, but was more at a loss when I made him a big brother by bringing home a baby girl. He seemed perfectly at home with his role as older brother--for about a month. He then came and said it was “time for her to go home now,” and I realized he had just been playing the good host. When I explained that she was ours forever, he gave me one of those preschool looks that projects horror. Thinking back now, he may have had a premonition. In Niki Daly’s Monsters Are Like That, Leo doesn’t want Fran to play with his toys, but Fran is resourceful and gets into his stuff anyway. She paints her face, finds monster hands and lies in wait. The joke is on her, though, because it turns out that Leo likes his sisters on the scary side. 
http://www.childlit.org.za/ndaly.html
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