Parenthetical.net

I Am the Wallpaper, by Mark Peter Hughes

According the to back cover, “Thirteen-year-old Floey Packer feels like she’s always blended into the background” as the younger sister of beautiful social butterfly Lillian. “But when Lillian suddenly gets married and heads off on a monthlong honeymoon, Floey…embarks on a self-improvement mission — with excellent results. …[But] are people noticing Floey because she’s so fabulous — or because her evil cousins posted her diary on the Internet?”

We know this story — underappreciated younger sibling comes of age. It has a modern internet twist, cool. But what the back cover doesn’t tell you is that Floey doesn’t come off as underappreciated — she’s just a whiny brat.

And those evil cousins? Weren’t so evil until she pitched a fit about eating dinner with them at the wedding and, upon meeting them for the first time, welcomed them to her room with, “Know what happens to nosy little girls? The tooth fairy comes in the middle of the night and chops their little heads off, that’s what. So mind your own business” (p. 26).

I will admit that I didn’t get past page 71, so I don’t know how the characters develop. But I can tell you that they read like cariacatures of themselves for at least the first few chapters — Mom unreasonably requires that CinderFloey clean up after her cousins, the Wacky Sister has multiple bridezilla breakdowns, the Jealous Girlfriend starts a catfight in a coffeehouse.

I hope that by the end of the book, Floey realizes that she’s been a brat and apologizes to the people who deserve an apology…but the first five chapters give every indication that we are meant to be sympathetic to Floey’s attitude, so I gave up. It got a star from School Library Journal, though, so maybe it’s just me. If you finish it, let me know what you think!

Oh, a quick fatpol note, because the lazy overuse of fat stereotypes smacked me upside the head in this book: Of the three kids Floey dislikes — two “evil cousins” and one creepy boy next door — two of them are fat. Which would be fine if their size was described neutrally, or at least not grotesquely. Instead, we get: “…the younger [cousin], Tish, just stared at me. She was ten and a real porker” (p. 25), and “The big lump across the table from me shifted in his chair. His name was Billy Fishman and he lived next door. Even though he was only eleven, he was already huge, almost mutant-sized. He looked like a side of roast beef with a clip-on tie” (p. 27). Unpleasant = fat, fat = unpleasant; duly reinforced.

* I linked to Kate Harding because she’s my favorite of the fatpol bloggers I know, and a glance at her site will give a decent intro to the issues. People who know this stuff — please comment with more links, especially if you have good ones about fat stereotypes in children’s lit!