Pinkwater is in fine satirical form in this hilarious sendup of the diet industry, in which a fat threesome gets revenge after being shipped off to a weight-loss camp. A lecture given on Anti-Fat Day, a local holiday when thin citizens demonstrate their affection for their fat neighbors by hurling doughnuts and screaming insults at them, convinces the parents of Ralph and Sylvia that they must send their overweight children to Camp Noo Yoo so that they can become “all skinny and perfect.” At camp, the fat and once happy siblings dine on carrots, do compulsory aerobics, and attend “Creative Abuse and Motivation classes,” where they are told in vivid, side-splitting detail—“You will lose your job collecting dead skunks for the Fish and Wildlife Service” and “wind up in prison for stealing pumpkin pies”—how horrible their lives will be if they don’t slim down. Fellow camper Mavis, “a little round fatball of fury,” talks them into breaking out and wreaking vengeance on the gaunt and the proud. In the funniest and most pointed part here, the kids decide to give the self-righteous scrawny a taste of their own medicine, skewering them with the kind of insults (“Hey, pipe-cleaner man!”) and unsolicited advice (“You shouldn’t run at your weight . . . You should rest . . . and eat nourishing food”) that fat people routinely endure. In a fun and surprising resolution, the kids learn how to channel their feelings more constructively; finally realizing that creativity is sweeter than revenge. Delicious and nutritious. (Fiction. 8-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-439-15527-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
An authentic and moving time capsule of middle school angst, trauma, and joy.
Through the author’s own childhood diary entries, a seventh grader details her inner life before and after 9/11.
Alyssa’s diary entries start in September 2000, in the first week of her seventh grade year. She’s 11 and dealing with typical preteen concerns—popularity and anxiety about grades—along with other things more particular to her own life. She’s shuffling between Queens and Manhattan to share time between her divorced parents and struggling with thick facial hair and classmates who make her feel like she’s “not a whole person” due to her mixed White and Puerto Rican heritage. Alyssa is endlessly earnest and awkward as she works up the courage to talk to her crush, Alejandro; gushes about her dreams of becoming a shoe designer; and tries to solve her burgeoning unibrow problem. The diaries also have a darker side, as a sense of impending doom builds as the entries approach 9/11, especially because Alyssa’s father works in finance in the World Trade Center. As a number of the diary entries are taken directly from the author’s originals, they effortlessly capture the loud, confusing feelings middle school brings out. The artwork, in its muted but effective periwinkle tones, lends a satisfying layer to the diary’s accessible and delightful format.
An authentic and moving time capsule of middle school angst, trauma, and joy. (author's note) (Graphic memoir. 8-13)Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-77427-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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