The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

by Carolyn Mackler

Book Overview

An overweight teen is sure that she's the weakest link in her high-powered family - until her handsome, athletic, star-student brother has a shocking fall from grace. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves has a larger-than-average body and a plus-size inferiority complex. She lives on the Web, snarfs junk food, and follows the "Fat Girl Code of Conduct." Her stuttering best friend has just moved to Walla Walla (of all places). Her...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0763620912
• ISBN13: 9780763620912
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Candlewick
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.6" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

OMG: a Young Adult book that is GREAT?!

I didn't notice this was a YA book or I wouldn't have ordered it. I usually avoid them because I think they are ALMOST going to cover a topic, and then they don't. But this book could have been written by my sister (including all the sass and humor) and I could have been the adored big brother. Wow, talk about fiction looking like reality! If you think this is just another "fat chick" novel, you'd be passing up a very well written, very emotionally satisfying novel. I have to go back a LONG time to remember high school, but this novel time-travelled me right back to 10th grade. Read it!

This Book Has A Positive Body Image Message without the Sap

As a former undernourished-looking child and a current plus-sized 213-lb woman, I loved The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler. Don't take a look at the title and lump this book into the Teen Bridget Jones-Chick Lit category. Although it resembles one of those books of the ever fast growing genre, The Earth...is remarkably insightful, introspective, multi-layered, and well written. Carolyn creates a wonderfully multi-dimensional character in the form of Virginia Shreves. Virginia is a blond-haired and overweight 15-year old who does not fit in with her over-achieving, athletic, slim, and brown-haired family. Virginia is not only an outsider at school, but an outsider at home as well. Like her mindless eating and magazine reading, she encourages the isolation as shield. If no one can notice her, no one can criticize or tease her about her weight. Virginia even dabbles in self-mutilation to deal with the pain she feels about being a fat girl in world where being thin is in. Unlike other plus-size heroines, Virginia has a grasp of her sexuality and takes a firmer grasp of it as the novel progresses. Virginia makes out with her unofficial boyfriend, and enjoys it even when the size of her body makes her nervous. She also masturbates and is not ashamed feeling arousal towards boys. Mackler writes these scenes, there are a few but not too many, with careful wording. It is never vulgar or sappy. It is plain and unobtrusive. A tragedy in Virginia's family forces her to take charge of her mental, physical, emotional, and social health. By the end of the novel, which I read in little over a day, you're feeling as energized and as unstoppable as Virginia. The best thing about the book is that Virginia's boost in attitude has absolutely nothing to do with her weight. (I won't spoil the ending by tell you whether or not she slims down.) This is the best book featuring a plus-sized teen girl since Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett. I recommend it to all teens, regardless of size, struggling with body image and self esteem issues. I also think this book, like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, would make an excellent choice for a Mothers-Daughters Book Club.

A Book We Can All Relate To

The book The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler is truly an awesome read. The book is about an average highschooler named Virginia Shreves, the only thing not exactly average about her is her weight. Virginia is bigger then normal and knows it and lives by what she calls the fat girl code of conduct. You get to know Virginia as a character and the issues in her life, one of them being her having to realize her brother is a date raper and her mother may never accept her for who she really is big boned and all. The book is humerous but also touches on some topics that are not so funny, like eating disorders, becasue shes not happy with her weight. It also has romance in it, which i think is the perfect mix. Carolyn Mackler's book is a read worth your time and a book you will regret dearly for passing up.

Great New Book

Virginia Shreves isn't what you would call a small girl. She's more of a round girl. She thinks that she's fairly comfortable with her size, until her best friend, Shannon, moves to Walla Walla, Washington, so her father can study onions, and she begins "fooling around" with Froggy Welsh the Fourth. The only problem, is that she can't speak to him during school hours, because she feels that she should follow the "Fat Girl Code of Conduct." Now she's not only depressed and lonely, but her Psychologist mother is trying to drag her to a nutritionist, and her best friend is now running around with a new crowd in Walla Walla, and doesn't have as much time to e-mail Virginia. Now Virginia's decided to try a new method to get herself to lose weight, and become attractive to everyone, a way that could hurt her. Badly.After reading "Love and Other Four Letter Words," I anticipated Mackler's newest release "The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things." I wasn't disappointed. Virginia is a fresh new personality (and body-type), in a sea of book characters who are tall, thin, and flat-chested. She appeals to girls who don't fit that mold. Her imperfections make her not only funny, but extremely relatable. Her boy troubles, best friend troubles, and eating disorder will teach girls of all ages to be happy inside their own skin. Whether that skin is thick or thin, black or white. A must have book to keep treasured for years to come.<...

True Rebelion

This book was just too good, it tells the story of Verginia Shreves, and her dealing with her best friends move to Walla Walla Washington, and her weird, and sometimes embarrassing first love. And while that seems like a total "Yeah-sounds-like-any-other-first-love-teenage-book-of-growing-up-and-finding-yourself" it really is much more then that. Virginia's story gets much deeper when her brother, (who also happens to be the one person in the entire world that she admires and looks up to the most) makes a huge life changing mastake that will follow him for the rest of his life. And while all this is happening Verginia decides that she is not going to take any of her mothers [stuff] anymore and stop looking the way her mother wants her to look, and starts being the person that she has always been deep down inside, and not just the fat, shy, loser girl that people once knew her as. I truly loved this book and recomend it to anyone who loves to read like I do.