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| Dumplin' by Julie Murphy |
"There's something about swimsuits that make you think you've got to earn the right to wear them. Really, the criteria is simple. Do you have a body? Put a swimsuit on it." This one's for anyone who has ever struggled with body image. Willowdean has, for most of her life, been pretty comfortable in her own skin. Her mom is a former beauty queen who runs the local Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant every year. Her recently deceased aunt struggled with her weight all her life, and Willowdean seems to have inherited her genes. Her mom has nicknamed her Dumplin' , not unkindly, but thoughtlessly. Willowdean's best friend and closest confidante, Ellen, is beauty queen material and Willowdean's mom has urged to enter the pageant this year. When Willowdean draws the amorous attention of a fellow worker at a fast food restaurant she begins to be uncomfortably aware of her size. What better way to give herself back her previous sense of worth than to enter the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant! Things get a bit out of hand, though, when Ellen decides she's also going to enter. This one's a real feel-good type story to warm you on a cold winter evening. You'll find yourself rooting for Willowdean (Dumplin') all the way!
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| Calvin by Martine Leavitt |
Mental illness has been the trendy topic of many teen books for the past few years. Think Schizo by Nic Scheff, It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, Cameron and the Girls by Edward Averett, among others. Enter Calvin by Martine Leavitt. Calvin was given a stuffed Hobbes the Tiger when he was a baby and he has a best friend named Susie. Hobbes was destroyed in the washing machine several years ago, but now Hobbes has begun revisiting him and seems to be actually real this time. Calvin knows he is falling apart in his senior year of high school, and believes that the only way to get better is to convince the reclusive creator of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson, to write one final strip, with Calvin as a 17 year old, and no Hobbes. He begins a long journey on foot across frozen Lake Erie to visit the writer, and Hobbes is going along with him. When Susie finds out he's going she is determined to accompany him as well. There is humor in this book, and the reader is not really sure if Susie is actually there, or another manifestation of Calvin's encroaching illness. It's a short one, at 181 pages, meant to be devoured in one sitting. Give this one a try. It's a bit different from the run of the mill teen stories.
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| Orbiting Jupiter |
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Another shorter book that's pretty new to the shelf is Orbiting Jupiter, the new one by Gary Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars and Okay For Now). Jack's family takes in a foster child, 14 year old Joseph, who has spent the last year incarcerated for trying to kill a teacher. Damaged and wary, Joseph becomes obsessed with locating his daughter, named Jupiter. This one is a heartbreaker, sparely and beautifully written by an award winning young adult
author. Devour it.
