"Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop!Augustus Gloop! So Big and Vile!
So greedy, foul, and infantile"
-Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl created the archetype of excess in contemporary children's literature- Augustus Gloop. Augustus had "fat bulging from every fold, with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head." The leiderhose-wearing-gluttonous-chunkster from Dusseldorf who met his fate in a river of chocolate, embodies a specific type of "bad child"- one who lacks the virtues of self-restraint. Even his name drips, viscous and detestable, an early sign that dear Augustus will not realize his own dreams, but drown in his slothful, underdeveloped moral personality.
As a culture, we haven't gotten much further than Dahl in our thinking about obesity (childhood or otherwise), though our waist lines continue to grow. So to inaugurate the blog, I will review contemporary literature featuring fat children and teens. Do they turn Gloop on his head, or do they reify him as a recognizable symbol of excess and destructiveness? How do these stories "frame fatness"? As sin? As pathology? As medical condition? Where do fat children find stories of growing up large that are realistic but fair-minded, that speak to their experience? How does fatness play out in terms of poverty, race, and gender?
Stay tuned for forthcoming book reviews:
- Masculinity and Adolescence in Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L Going... (Review for 11/22)
- Size, Race and Poverty from Fat Albert to Push...(Review for 12/6)
- Fat Gay Boyhoods? 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous by Graeme Aitken... (Review for 12/17)
2 comments:
Why not review Push? Not YA enough?
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