Friday, August 19, 2011

From the Library: Maggie Goes on a Diet & We Search for Fat-Friendly Children's Books | Bitch Media

From the Library: Maggie Goes on a Diet & We Search for Fat-Friendly Children's Books Bitch Media

The above link addresses fat positivity (and lack thereof) in kidlit, and talks about a new pre-teen book coming out called "Maggie Goes on a Diet". (Throwing up a little bit in my mouth, even writing about it). Maggie finds her inner gem, aka 'the hidden thin girl' which is a trope found everyone from television to romance novels (there's a whole new genre of 'fat' romance novels which I find to be all kinds of interesting - but this is a blog topic for another time). Anyhow- this book, and its very existence is both vomitous and rage inducing. Anyhow, the aforementioned post mentions the dearth of fat positive kid's literature, but does point out a book we own, called My Great Big Mamma by Olivier Ka, which, naturally, I own. (I was going to review it too, again, naturally). My review, in a nutshell, is that Ka's book is all kinds of fabulous, and is actually, really fat positive. It follows the story of a young boy who is trying to diet, and the confusion and sadness this causes for her son. Really, it's good. But I refuse to read it to my kids yet, because they haven't ever known a world (yet) in which fatness is bad. And until that world comes knocking at our door (and believe you-me, I will hold that door closed as long as I possibly can), that book is staying in the closet, safe and sound. (Except when I pull it out to read, because it's really quite sweet and lovely.)

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