Overview
Jamie is a senior in high school and, like so many kids in that year, doing too much-including trying to change the world-and fighting for her rights as a very fat girl. And not quietly: she's writing a column every week in the paper with her thoughts and fears and gripes. As her column raises all kinds of questions, so too, must she find her own private way in her world, with love popping up in an unexpected place, and satisfaction in her size losing ground to real frustration. Tapping into her own experience losing weight, her training as a psychotherapist, and the current fascination in the media for teens who are trying drastic weight-loss measures including surgery, Susan Vaught's searing and hilarious prose will grip readers of all sizes, leaving them eager to hear more.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
High school senior Jamie Carcaterra is not just fat; as she puts it, "I am THE Fat Girl, baby." In an attempt to enlighten fellow classmates about the indignities and injustices she faces daily, Jamie writes a weekly feature for her high school paper and calls it the Fat Girl Manifesto. The manifesto could land her a journalism scholarship for feature writing, which she desperately desires. Vaught (Trigger) upends stereotypes about fat girls via Jamie's bracing, take-no-prisoners columns and in Jamie's first-person account of her year. The supremely confident Fat Girl persona is hard to resist, and more believable than many of the situations the author piles on: the fat boyfriend who undergoes risky gastric bypass surgery and suffers complications; the overblown media reaction to Jamie's columns; the blossoming romance with the handsome high school paper's editor-in-chief. The novel reads in places more like a rant than an emotionally involving story, and much of the Fat Girl Manifesto will be familiar (vanity sizing, the ineffectiveness of fad diets, etc.). But teens who persevere will be rewarded with some priceless scenes, such as Jamie and friends going undercover to document the discriminatory behavior of sales clerks in a clothing boutique; and with carefully prepared revelations, especially Jamie's eventual awareness that she may be more limited by her anger than by her weight. Thought-provoking and, frequently, vigorous. Ages 12-up. (Jan.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationChildren's Literature -
Jamie Carcaterra is fat. She's not "plus-sized" or "large," just fat. She is tired of living in a world made for skinny girls, and she is tired of being pressured to change from everyone. She knew her senior year of high school would be difficult with college applications, the ACT, play rehearsal, and the school paper, The Wire. However, she never expected to be dealing with her boyfriend Burke getting risky bariatric surgery to staple his stomach. While trying to be supportive of Burke's choice to risk his life to be thin, Jamie takes a deeper look at her own life—the everyday challenges of being overweight and how the rest of the world could learn a few things from a "fat girl." Jamie begins a weekly column in The Wire, which she signs as "Fat Girl" and writes to tell her fellow students at Garwood High School what life is like as an overweight teen. This is a great discussion book for both genders, and it is not afraid to put private questions out in the open. Reviewer: Renee FarrahVOYA
AGERANGE: Ages 12 to 18.Jamie Carcaterra's feature series in the school newspaper is unapologetically called "Fat Girl." At more than three hundred pounds, the high school senior feels qualified to write about life as a self-described fat girl. She is loud, opinionated, and the only anger to which she admits is at society's manner of treating the overweight. But is she being honest with herself? Is she really okay with herself as a "fat girl"? In her articles, she writes about her inability to wear trendy, age-appropriate clothes simply because they are not available in her size and describes the scorn that she endures from the clerks at the teen clothing store. She does not write about her embarrassment when she arrives at an ACT testing site only to find that the seating does not accommodate her girth. When her equally large, football-player boyfriend decides to have bariatric surgery, she writes about his risks, setbacks, and progress. She does not write about her fear that he will no longer want her once he is a "normal" size. Jamie's character is so well drawn that readers will feel her misery throughout the book. The description of her humiliating experience in a doctor's office is agonizing. The book's one flaw is that the supporting characters lack depth, with her two best friends especially coming off as somewhat stereotypical. Despite that fault, the story is so well written that Jamie's agony is poignant to anyone, regardless of where one falls on the weight scale. Reviewer: Debbie Clifford
April 2008 (Vol. 31, No. 1)
School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up
High school senior Jamie Carcaterra doesn't apologize for being fat. In fact, she proclaims her fatness from the rooftops-or from the pages of her school newspaper, to be exact, in an attempt to win a college journalism scholarship. Jamie explores issues such as discrimination, health, stereotypes, and more in this engaging novel, which includes her columns as well as her first-person narrative. Despite her outspokenness, the teen nevertheless struggles to come to terms with her weight-refusing to eat in public and feeling a mixture of shame and anger when an insensitive doctor examines her. It's her boyfriend's decision to have weight-loss surgery, however, that drives the plot. His medical trials raise questions for Jamie, and for readers. Is obesity more dangerous than surgery? Is it worth risking your life to be thin? While Jamie and her friends sometimes come across as overly quirky and eccentric, readers will generally root for these appealing outsiders. Jamie is a strong, interesting character who grows over the course of the novel, recognizing her own contradictions. This is a powerful story for readers of any weight.
—Miranda DoyleCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.