I tried to read Crescent Dragonwagon’s To Take a Dare over the summer, but it was a non-starter. The storyline was interesting– I’ve always liked books about road trips– but it was like she was describing the book she planned to write, rather than showing what the character was doing. I ended up abandoning it a few chapters in.

Susan Callaway is the overweight daughter of the Wayne High School football coach. She is constantly harassed, especially by Kale Krasner, her main tormentor. When Blake, the quiet kid who works in the library, takes revenge against Kale for other wrongs, Susan ends up getting in trouble along with him. As part of her punishment, she must spend each Wednesday after school in a session with the school counselor, along with five other kids. Of course, those kids include Blake, Kale, a cute athlete, a popular girl, and a tough girl. Throughout the sessions, the kids grudgingly learn to respect each other as people.

by Vivian Vande Velde

Giannine Bellasario gets a gift certificate from her absentee father to play a virtual reality game. Meanwhile, the gaming center is under seige by a censorship group that apparently took its cues from PETA and ELF. While Giannine is under, the protesters damage the game she was playing on. She must win the game or she might die. The game itself features interesting characters like a barbarian king who just wants his crown back and some half-brothers that want nothing more than to off Giannine’s character. While playing the game, she learns about trust and forgiveness. Overall, an engrossing read. I would recommend it to middle school or high school girls who kind of like computers and fantasy, but aren’t obsessed. It would also be a good book for kids with absentee dads.

Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett reads like the Sweet Valley twins decided to tackle eating disorders and health problems. Lara Ardeche is a beauty queen who thinks she’s also a nice, sweet person. However, when she starts to gain weight unexplainably, she finds out she’s not so nice after all. in fact, she’s angry, judgmental, and kind of mean. She keeps gaining weight as doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with her and her parents keep insisting that if she would just diet and exercise, she could get back to her perfect weight. Meanwhile, her boyfriend feels alienated and her family is falling apart. As I read this, I thought several times that I could figure out why she was gaining weight (midnight binge eating and denial of her anger at her parents) but that’s not the direction Bennett took this novel.

Praise for this book has been nearly unanimous, and it does do a pretty good job of capturing the rage and helplessness of gaining weight in an image-obsessed society. The light tone might make it easier for kids to relate to Lara’s problems.

If you’ve been the new kid or the fat girl, you might like this book.

Reviews by Students:

A review by a student in Illinois
A review by a student in Missouri
A review included on a page from a Rhode Island school

Reviews by Adults:

Annotation from the New York University Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
Children’s Book Page review
Teenagers Today review

Related Links:

All Consuming page about the book (This site is not YA specific.)
Teen CyberCenter list of books about food and weight
A Kansas school’s list of books about eating disorders

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher is about the Cutter High School Mermen, an unlikely swim team of misfits trying to earn their letters. The team is put together by The Tao Jones, better known as TJ, one of the three mixed-race people in his town, and coached by a teacher who started the team to avoid having to be the assistant wrestling coach. Along with being an unlikely group of athletes, the swimmers don’t even have a pool of their own. They swim in a too-small pool at a local rec center. They also face the harassment of a town where football rules everything and star players never move on from their high school glory.

Whale Talk is worth reading, and then it’s worth reading again. It tackles race relations (TJ’s parents are white, as is most of the population of his small Washington state town), the obsession over high school athletics, drugs, violence… but Crutcher does it with a light touch and an appealing, realistic, teenage narrator.

Reviews by Students:

Review by a student in Virginia

Reviews by Adults:

Teenreads.com review
Review at a Pennsylvania library

Related Links:

Allconsuming page about the book (Not YA specific)
Booksense.com interview with Chris Crutcher about Whale Talk
Chris Crutcher, hero or villain?
Detroit News article about a ban on Whale Talk being lifted
Parents question language in Whale Talk (St. Joseph, Missouri article from 2001)

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?
If you’ve reviewed this book, send me a trackback!