Fat Boy VS The Cheerleaders

We had author Swati Avasthi in class this week, talking about her book Chasing Shadows, however, similar to Carrie Mesrobian, Swati spent a lot of time talking with us about the issues brought up over the course of writing her books, in her case, gender and racial bias.

Author talks are fast becoming my favorite part of the class. They are unbelievably fascinating.

When we were talking about Perfectly Good White Boy and Sex and Violence, we had all agreed that we loved the character development, but speculated that most young adults wouldn't be quite so keen on books where nothing much actually happens. Swati, however, described for us the time when her young son slowed down on his reading intake, but didn't give up, and is still a strong reader. He reported that he was kept interested in reading because of books like The Hunger Games, that had female main characters, because although sports and action and "boy" books were fun to read, books starring girls would talk more about emotions, and he could relate to them.

This made me rethink my analysis of "They might not like it", because the male protagonists of Perfectly Good White Boy, Reality Boy, and Geoff Herbach's Fat Boy VS The Cheerleaders basically never shut up about their emotions. And, to their credit, in the latter two books, there is quite a fair amount of action and plot.

In Fat Boy, Gabe has a running, first-person narrative as he describes to his lawyer the events that led to him being arrested in front of Cub Foods (yes this is a Minnesota book -- although Google informs me that Cub also exists in Illinois). He's a funny, honest, reflective, and occasionally sad in his narration, and I wish I had listened to this as an audio book because it's perfect for that medium. As it stood, I took barely a day to read it. The pacing was quick, and the story interesting and compelling.

My favorite thematic part of the novel was that it validated everybody. The cheerleaders weren't demonized because they wanted to cheer and dance around -- Gabe wants them to cheer, and wants the band kids to do band stuff, and the jocks to play sports, and everybody to do what they're passionate about, without feeling bad, or lesser.

It's a common theme with kids: observe any siblings bickering in public, and it's usually along the lines of one kid deliberately destroying the happiness of the other kid, simply because the first kid is unhappy/bored/can't stand seeing their annoying kid sister be happy for getting to hold onto a stupid shopping basket. Gabe recognizes that style within his father -- that anything where his father gets involved will be "ruined", because his father want to get involved, and will then bring it down, back to his level. It's unclear if this is intentional or not, but over the course of the book I really did believe that his dad was using the "my wife left me" card as a pass to be really emotionally abusive. The problem with that sort of emotional abuse is that there is no evidence. It's so subtle that it flies under the radar.

 Herbach shows us a model of kid recognizing that the happiness of two separate groups are not mutually exclusive. That you don't have to tear someone else down in order to bring yourself up, and that's a super powerful message for kids, especially those who are in high school -- and since kids read up, this book would be perfect for middle-school age kids, who are just getting ready to do battle with their high-school years.