PROFESSOR RENOIR’S COLLECTION OF ODDITIES, CURIOSITIES, AND DELIGHTS

A 19th-century girl with an unusual physique makes herself a life.

Babe was born “right as rain” in 1882 in a tiny Idaho town, but she grew atypically. Now 14, she’s 6 feet, 9 inches and 342 pounds. Pa, greedy and cold, sells her to a carnival, where the carnival master promises she’ll be a “uh, strongwoman act.” She is, in fact, extremely strong, but he forces her into fakery (like all his acts) and harsh, brash showmanship. Babe’s time in the cruel titular carnival—and after leaving it—show her as dogged, thoughtful, and loyal, with a tenacious sense of justice and a fierce protectiveness toward “critters.” (Readers sensitive to animal pain should gird their loins.) The text humanely characterizes people perceived as freaks but undermines this with frequent objectification, spotlighting Babe’s gigantism and her enemy-turned-friend Lotty’s dwarfism: “the dwarf and the giant stared each other down”; “Nothing was more clumsy than a dancing giant with an awkward dwarf ducking in and out of her legs”; “the odd sight of a dwarf, a giant, and an elephant.” The m-word, identified as a slur for dwarfs, is nevertheless frequently used. Babe’s self-proclaimed “hick-like” speech is part lower-class stereotype (“libarry”), part creative (“ookus” for money). Everyone appears to be white.

A heart-rending and memorable picture of 19th-century challenges for girls with unusual bodies—and for captive animals—though the narration sometimes uses carnival lenses itself.