One Fat Summer
in journal
by Roberty Lipsyte
one in a series of YA books i’m determined to read this spring as part of my YA literature class in school.. i’m very glad i began with this one—such a good book. such a cliche but: i wish this book hadn’t ended, i wanted to keep following bobby marks and see how the rest of his summer and school year went.
bobby doesn’t like summer at all – he gets hassled by his dad, gets bored out of his mind, and more than anything, cannot even nominally hide or pretend that his weight is normal. yes, bobby is 14 years old and over 200 pounds, with no signs of slowing.
however, this summer, of course, promises to be something totally different. he gets a low-paying hard job, is abandoned by his best friend, has a local bully freaking him out, and his parents are fighting nonstop. out of all this negative, though, bobby makes sense of and starts to overcome seemingly impossible problems that have plagued him for years.
what really stood out for me, though, is that bobby is such a sweet boy, his voice really shines and comes across so honestly.
