FAT ELLIOT AND THE GORILLA

The title is incomplete for there are really three principal characters in Pinkwater's comiccoated diet pill: Elliot -- 176(apple) pounds, friendless and ""not very interesting,"" thegorilla -- a sort of superego who reinforces Elliot's decision to diet and hangs around unnoticed by the boy's parents (unsurprising, as ""most of the time they hardly noticed Elliot""), and the drugstore scale which sends messages through the slot addressed to BLIMP and FATSO, turns Elliot on to a reducing book, and spews out a SPECIAL JACKPOT FORTUNE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE WHAT YOU DONOr WANT TO BE. It's essentially an overextended attempt to make offbeat fun out of a get thin message, and we tend to agree with Elliot's doctor who tells him early on ""You ought to go on a diet. Of course, nobody ever sticks to one."" However this and other bluntly honest acknowledgments of what a fat kid is really up against are funny in their unexpectedness and disarming enough to make his program worth a try.