By Lisa Fipps
She struggles with the fat girl stereotypes:
“They think fat people are dumb.
I’m at the top of my class.
They think we’re slobs.
My room is spotless.
They think we’re unhappy.
That’s true.
But they think I’m unhappy
Because I’m fat.
The truth is,
I’m unhappy because they bully me
About being fat.”
Through short, one to two page verses we follow Ellie as she attempts to find space for herself in school, her family and in life. Her comfort place is the swimming pool where she floats and expands like a starfish and she can take up as much room as she wants. The character of her mother is absolutely brutal: Her mother searches through Ellie’s garbage looking for wrappers, she denies her piano lessons and new first day of school clothes, she takes her to see a surgeon about bariatric surgery. Oh...how unloved her mother makes Ellie feel.
“And it hit me.
That’s how people see me,
As bits and pieces of fat.
Not as a person.”
Thank goodness that the Dad character pulls it together to support his daughter and that the therapist works hard to reach this sad and struggling girl. They tell Ellie,
“ No matter what you weigh,
you deserve for people to treat you
like a human being with feelings.”
By the end of this novel Ellie claims herself and her beautiful body and tells the bullies and her mother:
“And I’m learning to love me.
The fat on my body
Never felt as heavy as
Your words on my heart.”
An important story for middle school aged children, their parents, friends, bullies, teachers, and mental health professionals. It can give the children who have had similar experiences the courage to listen to and to express themselves. It can make readers like me acknowledge some of the hurtful thoughts and comments we’ve made and to think more kindly and thoughtfully. Both a heart-wrenching and heart-filled book that delivers, as K. A. Holt says on the back cover, “ a...real life that sings with humor, pain, and hope.” A must read.