I'm not fat, I'm fabulous book list. Check it out...
1) "Pretty Face" by Mary Hogan
Stuck in body-conscious southern California, hanging out with a perfectly proportioned best friend and living with a mom obsessed with slimming down, the overweight Hayley’s chances at happiness are as slim as she wants to be. However, when her concerned parents generously offer to send her to Italy for the summer to live with her mom’s college roommate, Hayley’s luck seems to be changing. Determined to shed pounds, Haley arrives in Umbria prepared to count calories; however, she almost immediately falls into the slow-paced rhythm of her host family that relies heavily on Italy’s rich food culture. At first guiltily giving into chewy breads and salty cheeses, Hayley soon learns that food isn’t the enemy and with determination naturally and healthily balances her weight. Beautifully written descriptions of the Italian countryside contrast with gritty details of California, highlighting Hayley’s transformation and adding depth to her character to make her much more than a pretty face. (Fiction. YA)
2) "This Book Isn't Fat, It's Fabulous" by Nina Beck
From a wealthy, snarky social scene to a fat camp resembling “a foreign country filled with geeks,” 16-year-old Riley’s narration is hilarious and fresh. She’s busy being in unrequited love with male best friend D (who doesn’t even have the “decency” to be gay) and IMing with a stranger online when her distracted father and almost-stepmother “Elizabitch” exile her to fat camp. Saucy Eric, the camp director’s son, picks her up from the train station and they begin to trade barbs full of delicious sexual tension. Why is her picture already in his pocket, and should she say “You’re a freak” or “Let’s make out” or “I like your nail polish”? (It’s red.) Lying is a big theme; Riley knows all along that she’s fabulous and fine without any weight-loss lessons, but a major crying meltdown helps her open up emotionally. Despite a few narrative glitches (the fat camp’s brochure erroneously and inexplicably claims that it “specialize[s]…in eating disorders”), this girl has flair.(Fiction. YA)
3) "Squashed" by Joan Bauer
This year's Delacorte prizewinner answers the question, ``Is growing the biggest pumpkin in Iowa grounds for a YA novel?'' with a resounding ``Yes!'' Never losing sight of her goal, the grower--Ellie Morgan, 16--lives a rich, eventful life. Her relationship with her widowed dad, corporate counselor and farming dropout, who comes to value Ellie's dedication to growing things, and with new boyfriend Wes, whose enthusiasm is corn but whose dedication to Max's cause comes to equal Ellie's; her vendetta with odious Cyril Pool, rival farmer--all are profoundly influenced by her commitment to bringing ``Max'' to his eventual 611 pounds. It's dauntingly hard work, realistically described, though the pampering of Max is also comical. There's suspense, too: pumpkins are being kidnapped as the great Pumpkin Weigh-In draws near, while Cyril's weightier monster, a threat to the finish, fails dramatically on the scales--rotten to the core. Ellie narrates with lively wit and good humor; meanwhile, nourishing themes are cunningly developed, among them the pumpkin's transitory triumph and its continuing life cycle. Delightful fun. (Fiction. 11+)
4) "How I Got Skinny, Famous, and Fell Madly in Love" by Ken Baker
A fat teen employs patently unsafe weight-loss techniques on reality television and gets skinny.
Emery’s face-lifted, Botoxing mother named her after a manicure tool, yet somehow Emery doesn’t fit in with her swimsuit-model, boob-enhanced sister or fitness-freak father. What if she weren’t fat? She acquiesces to the filming of a weight-loss reality show in her home, wanting the prize—if Emery loses 50 pounds in 50 days, she’ll win $1,000,000—but author Baker, chief news correspondent of E! Entertainment Television, makes skinniness itself the golden goal, snarkily bashing fatness from the start. The show’s producers require intense exercise and severe calorie restriction; behind their backs, Emery adds laxative tea and Adderall. Attempts to satirize the extremity—the nutritionist who takes Emery down to 790 calories per day authored How to Eat without Actually Eating—have the impact of Post-it notes on a billboard. Baker wants it both ways: Laxatives, speed and “insanely low” calories give Emery both “an eating disorder” and “good habits,” a cognitive disconnect if ever there was one; moreover, the eating disorder vanishes after its single mention, ending the story on a bizarrely upbeat note. Continuity inconsistencies may well drive readers crazy; that 790-calorie diet could well be a 395-calorie diet, for instance, but it’s just not clear. Family secrets and reality TV twists aside, this is a cheap instruction guide for dangerous dieting.
A biggest loser. (Fiction. 14-16)
5) "Teenage Waistland" by Lynn Biederman
This overambitious addition to Fat Lit follows four morbidly obese New York City–area teens who sign up to undergo a clinical trial for Lap-Band weight-loss surgery. In alternating chapters, the quartet—Marcie, living with her recently divorced mother and seemingly perfect cheerleader-captain stepsister; Bobby, whose father wants him to follow in his college-football and family-business footsteps; East, of Japanese ancestry and still grieving for her father, who committed suicide; and Char, who always hides her real feelings—relate their time before and after surgery and how they confront the real issues behind their weight gain in a support group, dubbed Teenage Waistland (after The Who lyrics). Melodrama takes over the novel as the teens also face guilt, family secrets, squashed dreams, lost identities, gender stereotypes, new romance, abortion and not one but two deaths. Lengthy dialogue turns into informational and instructive lessons on Lap-Band surgery and how patients fail and succeed with it. The lone attempt at humor—a dildo-buying expedition—fizzles out. Possibly more than its characters, this story suffers from excess.(Fiction. YA)
6) "Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies" by Erin Dionne
Fat girl, entered into a plus-size beauty contest by her interfering aunt, decides to lose weight so that she’ll be too thin to compete in an event she considers to be more than mortifying. It’s a clever premise, and the most winning part of the book is the beauty pageant itself, which gives readers the opportunity to see the inside workings of the process. These scenes are far more engaging than the more familiar fat-girl-at-school material, which pits 13-year-old protagonist Celeste against a thin meany who is trying to steal her best friend. The beauty competition is presented as a multilevel affair that happens over a period of time, which gives Celeste the opportunity not only to shrink in size but to grow from passive and dull to resourceful and sympathetic. Although it’s slow to gain traction and a bit too explicit in terms of life lessons learned, readers will warm to Celeste as she becomes a competitor in the Miss HuskyPeach contest, to say nothing of life itself.(Fiction. 8-12)
7) "Huge" by Sasha Paley
A clichéd, moralistic tale of lessons learned at fat camp. Two girls spar and then bond as summer roommates. Perky April has “saved all year… all of [her] birthday money. Christmas. Everything” to pay for Wellness Canyon because she wants to be thin and popular. (How birthday and Christmas gifts could possibly total “seven grand” for a girl with a single mother on disability is distractingly inexplicable.) Wil, in contrast, has rich parents who own a sleek gym chain; her fatness is their shame, so they force her to go. Both April and Wil lose weight over the summer, while they obnoxiously insult each other, become friends, kiss the same boy, plot revenge on him, fight more and make up. Paley unequivocally touts weight loss and repeatedly uses words like “waddled” about her fat characters. She also displays ignorance of physiology, equating fitness unquestionably with thinness. Appalling and simplistic. (Fiction. 11-13)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.