Fat Girl on a Plane

April 1, 2018

Gr 10 Up-This debut novel offers a unique perspective of a weight loss journey. Aspiring fashion designer Cookie Vonn is fed up with being overweight. She is 330 pounds. She feels her weight has caused her supermodel mother to neglect her and her best friend Tommy to stick her permanently in the friend zone. And being fat ensures that her nemesis and her boss's daughter Kennes ridicules her every chance she gets. The last straw comes when Cookie is forced to pay for an extra ticket on a flight to New York where she's applying for a dream job. She decides that losing weight will force the world to treat her better, and she will feel better about herself. After losing 199 pounds, Cookie finally understands that losing weight is not what she needs to feel better about herself. The novel is told in alternating time lines from Cookie's pre- and post-weight loss perspectives. This is a realistic portrayal of the frustrations of weight loss and size acceptance, complete with realistic and authentic depictions of sex, body positivity, and ambition. VERDICT A strong choice for most YA shelves.-Grace Bazile, Brooklyn College

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2018
A teen reaps economic, professional, and social benefits from losing weight.Cookie Vonn--white and blonde like her supermodel mother--has absentee parents, a zeal for fashion, a hardcore work ethic, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: interviewing a world-famous New York designer for her blog internship. But the airline declares Cookie "too fat to fly." So, age 17 and 330 pounds, Cookie joins the NutriNation diet plan. A plot thread labeled "fat" follows her that year, while the interspersed "skinny" thread follows her at age 19, after losing 199 pounds. Despite showing two parts of the same person's life--not alternate universes--it reads like alternate universes. Cookie's first-person voice is zesty, funny, bitter, and bewitching in both, but they vary starkly in plausibility. Fat Cookie faces realistic discrimination and cruelty, while skinny Cookie stumbles into fantasy-level boons: designing her own fashion line, an all-expenses-paid wealthy lifestyle, corporate sponsorship, and passionate sex in an Argentine gondola. Although skinny Cookie still can't find joy, her bounty of material gains profoundly undermines the text's attempted message that weight loss is no golden ticket. Skinny Cookie eventually--supposedly--reaches self-acceptance, moderating the diet that left her constantly hungry--but how much import can a literary fat-acceptance message carry when spoken by a still-skinny character? The book assumes a white default.Although it aims to liberate, this is just another weight-loss arc accidentally portraying fatness as tragic and optional. (author's note) (Fiction. 14-16)

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April 23, 2018
Cookie Vonn, a 19-year-old aspiring clothing designer, has spent years advocating for girls who don’t fit the stereotypical standard of beauty promoted by the fashion industry. Before her own significant weight loss on the “NutriNation” diet, she was often dismissed and ridiculed for her size. Chapters alternate between the period before Cookie’s weight loss—including the humiliating flight when she was told that she was too large for one plane seat—and after. In the present day, doors are opening for Cookie now that she is thin. She takes a sabbatical from college to team up with a much older, established designer to create a plus-size collection, but she realizes that losing weight isn’t the magical cure-all she thought it would be. As she and the designer enter a sexual relationship, she worries that her life is beginning to mirror that of her thoughtless supermodel mother, even as she fights to give plus-size women a voice. Readers will appreciate deVos’s characterization of Cookie, who realistically struggles to stay true to herself, regardless of the numbers on the scale. Ages 14–up. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

March 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 Cookie Vonn is traveling to New York City to interview her fashion idol, hoping this opportunity will jump-start her career as a plus-size designer. When she is declared too fat to fly en route to New York, she decides to make a change. In dual narratives taking place before and after Cookie's dramatic weight loss, we see Cookie break into the fashion world, enter into a sexual relationship with her mentor-idol, and lose herself a bit as she drops pounds and begins to look more like her supermodel mother. Cookie has a lot of anger to process, and it comes through in her reactions to the new opportunities she gets as her appearance changes, as well as her relationship with her family, a bully, and her best guy friend. Cookie's constant processing spirals in a way that is realistic, but may be disorienting for readers. Rich descriptions of fabrics, clothes, and brands are a joyful thread through both time lines, and they center Cookie's passion for making fabulous clothes for all bodies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)