Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught. Bloomsbury. 2008. Teens.

All those things you think--but don't say--about  fat, being fat, or fat people? Jamie Carcaterra says them. She calls you on them. Jamie's a senior. She's a writer. She's an actress, and she has a boyfriend. She's out to win a college scholarship with her blunt, brutal column Fat Girl in the school's newspaper.

I haven't read any of Susan Vaught's work before, but the characters she's created in BFM and her head-on tackling of issues that many shy away from has made me curious. According to her web site, Vaught is a practicing psychiatrist, as well as a full-time writer. Vaught also candidly shares pics regarding her own body transformation on the site, so I'm sure she's speaking, at least partly, through experience through several characters in her novel. According to the publisher's site, BFM has received several awards or citations--deservedly so!

I'm now anxious to read some of Vaught's other works, particularly Fat Tuesday and Trigger!

Love You Hate You Miss You

I just finished this Elizabeth Scott YA novel. It's Spring Break, so I've had the luxury of starting it this morning in bed and finishing it before lunch. I won't spoil the plot for you, but the novel touches on the Lord-of-the-Flies behavior we know that kids are so good at! They're beasts, and I think the beastliness starts younger and younger. Who knows...preschool probably already has clicques! I'm not saying adults aren't also beastly. We definitely don't grow out of it. It's just that adults have a bit more armor at the ready than do tikes. So, really, this novel spoke to me more as a parent than as a female (victim, I might add, of the beastliness...and occasional disher-outer of the beastliness...maybe more than "occasional," to be honest!). Anyway, the novel spoke to me as a parent because the crisis in Amy's life stems partly/mostly from her parents' absence in her life. They're in Amy's life physically, but they're not there poking, prodding, hovering...all those things that really tick off teens, and yet those things that are vital to warding off as much evil and danger as possible during that time in their lives. It's not a pretty time, and your teens are going to momentarily hate you for monitoring and checking and pestering. And you can't guarantee their safety, but you do your best. And most of the time your teens forgive you later. That's what this novel said to me. It said, "Parents, wake up! You HAVE to make your kids mad to truly be doing your job. Don't take the easy way and tell yourself that a quiet kid is a happy kid, a safe kid. 'Quiet' is an awfully good cover!"