Just Finished Reading ... Butter AND Skinny

Butter by Erin Jade Lange and Skinny by Donna Cooner  -- each book is about a morbidly obese teen with musical talent. Each of these characters faces bullying, self-hatred, and some very difficult choices.

Butter
by Erin Jade Lange
Published by Bloomsbury Children's
on September 18, 2012

Source: e-ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. See my FTC disclosure here.





My summary: Butter is a gifted saxophone player. He has a crush on Anna, a girl at his school. He also weighs 423 pounds. Anticipating Anna's rejection, he carries on an internet relationship with her disguised as a private school kid named JP. He fears he'll never be able to lose weight or have the life he wants, so he creates a website devoted to his plan to eat himself to death on New Year's Eve. The popular kids at school get wind of his plan and, unsure if he's serious or just trying to get attention, they begin to cheer him on.

My take:  Like this book's premise, Butter is both horrifying and fascinating.

The thing I liked most about this book was its moral complexity. There's a lot of subtle commentary here about modern technology, about the uneasy relationship between voyeurism and entertainment, about the fine line between a supportive relationship and an undermining one.

To me,  Butter was not a book with obvious heroes and villains. Butter's online relationship with Anna is sad but also cuts two ways.Yes, Butter is totally and completely delusional to think that a gorgeous, popular girl would ever give him the time of day in real life. On the other hand, why is gorgeous, popular Anna in a relationship with a guy who will never meet up with her, never talk to her on the phone, never fully reveal himself to her? Clearly, Anna has her own issues. Although I would have loved to have seen these explored a bit more in the book, this is really Butter's story.

Given reality TV and the fact that so much of teens' social lives takes place on the internet, Butter's website to chronicle his own suicide is both ghoulish and apt. At first, I wasn't sure whether his site was a cry for attention or a cry for help. Until the very end of this book, I wasn't sure how things were going to turn out.

Butter is way more than just a book about a kid with weight issues -- this is a thought-provoking book that still has me pondering the way technology influences our self-image and our relationships with others.

Skinny
by Donna Cooner
To be published by Point/Scholastic
on October 1, 2012

Source: received an ARC from the publisher at BEA (Book Expo America.) Link to FTC statement above.




My summary:  Ever, a talented singer, is certain that she'll never play the lead in the school musical, never get asked out on a date, never have the life she dreams about. Ever weighs over 300 pounds. After she makes the decision to undergo bariatric surgery, Ever begins a new stage in her life.

My take: I had the impression that this book was about an overweight girl struggling with "Skinny," a voice inside her head that undermines her self-esteem and self-image. I was intrigued -- I mean, what girl or woman doesn't have that voice, the one that tells her she's not smart enough, not pretty enough, not good enough? That voice is part of this book, but Skinny is mainly a book about one girl's experience with gastric bypass surgery.

Ever's decision to have surgery felt a little rushed to me. Yes, Ever seems to have a genetic predisposition to be overweight. But Ever also watched her mother die of cancer, then gained fifty pounds in a short period of time. When she goes to the doctor to discuss the possibility of surgery, he asks fifteen year-old Ever how many calories are in a Big Mac, lectures her father on the dangers of obesity, then hands over the consent forms -- which her father signs. Done. I was a little surprised that the issue of therapy never seemed to come up -- at least in the ARC version of this book.

That aside, while Butter presents a guy's experience of being overweight, Skinny does an excellent job of portraying female characters' insecurities. Skinny does acknowledge the fact that normal weight women have issues too. Ever's stepsister Briella is deeply hurt by the fact that her father doesn't make time to have a relationship with her.

While I liked Skinny, at times I felt that the book's many Cinderella themes (Ever's name, her stepmother and stepsisters, the fact that her school is putting on a production of Cinderella, Ever's big makeover for a school dance) felt heavy-handed. Ever has the surgery, gets whisked off to the mall for a haircut and some new clothes, and suddenly, all her dreams start coming true.  It's great to be healthy, but losing weight isn't like the wave of a fairy godmother's wand -- it doesn't magically fix every problem.

These two books presented different and interesting viewpoints on teen obesity. I think Butter and Ever are characters that a lot of us can relate to -- people who just wish that others could see and appreciate them as they really are.