YA Thursday

The Possibility of Now by Kim Culbertson (Scholastic hardcover, 26 January 2016).

Mara James has been a perfectionist and over-achiever as long as she can remember. She's on track to be class valedictorian at her private school in San Diego, until she has a meltdown in calculus class.  

Not just any meltdown, a tear-up-the-test-paper-and-walk-out-of-class meltdown.  When asked to explain it, she really can't.  She just knows that she can't go back to school because someone recorded the whole thing on their phone and uploaded it to YouTube. The video has a gazillion views, and she needs to get away.

Mara's solution is to suggest to her mother and stepfather that she spend the next term in Lake Tahoe with her father, whom she hasn't seen since she was around seven.  She's hoping to kill two birds with one stone:  to escape from Ranfield Academy, and to get to know her father.

The school's condition is that she continue to do her schoolwork through their home study program; her mother's is that she see a counselor.  Mara doesn't think either of those will be a problem, since she doesn't seem to have much in common with the kids her age that she meets in Lake Tahoe.

As a high school teacher for over 18 years, Kim Culbertson is well-qualified to write about the pressures that today's teens (and even younger kids) are subjected to in their day-to-day lives:  to excel in school subjects, but still have enough extra-curricular activities that they appear "well-rounded" on their university applications. The Possibility of Now would be helpful for high school students and their parents, as well as their teachers.

FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Teen Tuesday

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray hardcover, 15 September 2015).

Willowdean Dickson has no problems being fat. She owns it.  

Having been heavy since she was a child, Will has come to terms with her weight. Her mother Shirley, had young Willow on fad diets before she was eleven.  Now that Will is a teenager, the overt attempts have ended, but the tacit campaign continues, with Shirley inviting her daughter to watch programs on television about people who've lost a lot of weight.  

Despite being a former beauty queen (Miss Teen Blue Bonnet 1977!), Shirley insists that she's more interested in Will's health than her appearance.  The recent death of Shirley's sister Lucy, who weight neatly 500 pounds supports that, but Will is just not sure.

Shirley now runs the Pageant, which, along with the high school football team, is the Clover City's only claim to fame.  Will could live with that until her best friend Ellen decided to enter. Not only that, but Ellen's started hanging around with Callie, whom she met at Pageant Boot Camp, and who treats Will like a freak.  

But  Bo, the cute guy that Will works with, doesn't seem to mind her size.  Or does he? The only time they spend together apart from work is making out behind the old elementary school.  

I would like to say only that Willowdean's method of dealing with this is completely unexpected, but it has already been revealed in the promotional blurbs (which I seldom read before reviewing books).

Will decides that the only way to regain her self-confidence is to enter the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant herself, convincing a few other unconventional candidates to join her, and prove that they have just as much right to compete as the skinny girls do.

Like "rape culture", "fat-shaming"  (both terms that I find irksome) has become a hot-button issue recently, though so far, there aren't as many current young adult titles* on the topic. Dumplin' is a well-conceived and -written exploration of a young woman's method of dealing with it.  

*See also Sugar, by Deirdre Riordan Hall (Amazon/Skyscape, June 2015), which I reviewed for School Library Journal (May 2015).


FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for providing me with the e-galley to review.