A teenager who has it all—perfect body, perfect personality, perfect grades, perfect boyfriend—loses it when she gains a hundred pounds in this unsubtle but ultimately savvy problem novel that reads like an Alicia Silverstone vehicle waiting to happen. A 118-pound beauty pageant veteran at 16, Lara is elected Homecoming Queen while still a junior. Then, for no discernible reason, she starts to gain weight, and her glittery world comes crashing down. Desperately putting her complacent philosophy— ``If you dream it, you can do it''—to the test, she embarks on increasingly stringent programs of diet and exercise, to no avail. Drugs and counseling fail, too; she gains more weight even while on a monitored starvation diet before learning that she might have Axell-Crowne Syndrome, a rare metabolic disorder with no known cure. Meanwhile, as the numbers on the scale climb steadily and Lara's self-image goes into a tailspin, she experiences the social cost of being fat: the comments that range from catty to helpful to devastating; the unwarranted assumptions about her personal habits; the skepticism of peers and doctors; the creeping sense of being invisible. Bennett takes Lara through the whole patch with brutal directness, allowing her one loyal best friend and a boyfriend who means it when he says he still loves her. While the hazard of setting unrealistic standards of beauty is a familiar theme in teen novels, the author lays out the issues with unusual clarity, sharp insight, and cutting irony. The book's aim is not high culture but high school culture, and it scores for pure entertainment value. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32274-7
Page Count: 259
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
