Dumplin'

Willowdean (Dumplin') is a fat girl who's content in her own skin. Narrator Eileen Stevens provides an appealing look into the workings of Will's mind. Will describes herself as a "cashier, Dolly Parton enthusiast, and resident fat girl." Her attitude is upbeat and positive, but she's not saccharine sweet. Stevens gives her appropriate teenaged snarkiness, and each deep sigh speaks volumes. When a big disappointment causes Will to lose her focus, she becomes anxious and insecure. Her mother coordinates the annual Blue Bonnet Beauty Pageant, and, surprisingly, Will decides to enter--without losing weight. Soon more "outsider" teens enter as well. Stevens depicts body image issues, first romance, drag queens, and rebellious beauty queens. Listeners won't want to miss meeting this funny, original heroine. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 1, 2015
About the only thing Clover City has going for it is its beauty pageant, the oldest in Texas. It’s run by Willowdean Dickson’s mother—a former winner—who has a hard time with the reality that Willowdean, a self-described “fat girl,” will never be a beauty queen. Willowdean is okay with her size, mostly, but with 10th grade ending and her best friend considering having sex with her boyfriend, Willowdean feels like she is being left on the wrong side of the experience divide. An unexpected kiss with Bo, her handsome fast-food restaurant coworker, is thrilling, but she’s also horrified at the idea of him touching her anywhere there is extra flesh. And that very reaction horrifies her, too; she thought she was at peace with herself. Murphy (Side Effects May Vary) successfully makes every piece of the story—Dolly Parton superfans, first love, best-friend problems, an unlikely group of pageant entrants, female solidarity, self-acceptance, and Willowdean’s complicated relationship with the mother who nicknamed her “Dumplin’ ”—count, weaving them together to create a harmonious, humorous, and thought-provoking whole. Ages 13–up. Agent: Molly Jaffa, Folio Literary Management.

August 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Sixteen-year-old Dolly Parton-loving Willowdean doesn't usually struggle with her identity and self-confidence as a fat girl in a her small Texas town, where her mother leads the local pageant scene, until hot former jock Bo kisses her. In this novel, Murphy takes her time letting Willowdean explore her feelings about a variety of situations relating to friendship, jealousy, sexual attraction, drag queens, her obese aunt's death, her relationship with her mother, and her own self-worth. Murphy celebrates small-town Texas with her strong sense of community and culture, in part by creating very realistic and deep characters to populate Willowdean's world, having them frequent places like truckbeds and fast-food joints, and giving them pure Texan dialogue: "Oh God, roll down the mother flippin' windows!" Unlike the similarly smart, funny, and large heroines of Robin Brande's Fat Cat (Knopf, 2009) or Suzanne Supplee's Artichoke's Heart (Dutton, 2008), Willowdean doesn't have to lose the weight to get the boy and her confidence, but instead remains a strong and realistic overweight girl to whom many readers will aspire: "I'm not doing this to be some kind of Joan of Fat Girls, or whatever. I'm doing this...for me." VERDICT A joyous read that will be beloved by many teens who can relate to feeling uncertain in their own skins.-Rhona Campbell, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
In a small Texas town, a confident fat girl confronts new challenges to her self-esteem. At age 16, Willowdean-her mother calls her Dumplin'-has a good sense of herself. She's uninterested in Mom's raison d'etre, the Clover City Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant, which annually takes over the town and Will's own house. Mom won once and now runs the pageant, dieting to fit her old dress and pressuring Will to diet too. Will doesn't. She mourns her beloved aunt Lucy, a second parent to her who died six months ago, and simmers with pleasure over a new, hot, sort-of-boyfriend. However, his touch makes Will panic with newfound insecurity. She loses him, loses her old best friend, gains new social-outsider buddies (a familiar trope)-and finds triumph somewhere amid Dolly Parton, drag queens, breaking pageant rules, and repairing relationships. The text refreshingly asserts that thinness is no requirement for doing and deserving good things, that weight loss isn't a cure-all, and that dieting doesn't work anyway. The plot arc, amazingly, avoids the all-too-common pitfall of having its fat protagonist lose weight. Unfortunately, Murphy loses her step and undermines her main point in the mournful, cringeworthy details of Lucy's death and life, which are blamed on extreme fatness rather than unfairness. In the end, it's more liberating than oppressive, with bits of humor and a jubilant pageant takeover by beauty rebels to crown this unusual book about a fat character. (Fiction. 13-16)

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from August 1, 2015
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* Willowdean Dickson, self-proclaimed fat girl and Dolly Parton enthusiast, has this to say: The word fat makes people uncomfortable. Will's mother (who calls her Dumplin') is a former winner of the local Miss Teen Blue Bonnet contest and now runs it, which makes pageant season an unwelcome constant in Will's life. To ignore it, she concentrates on her friendship with her bestie, Ellen, and her crush on fellow fast-food worker Bo, while trying to shake her grief over the death of her beloved 498-pound aunt. Knowing what it means to be fat, as well as what it means to her mother to be thin, Will decides to be happy being herself. Because why not? But when Bo kisses her behind the dumpster, and she and Ellen flameout, her life is turned inside out, and who she is becomes a question more than an answer. Murphy juggles a lot of plates here, and mostly keeps them admirably spinning. The story's set piece is the beauty contest, which Will and several other misfits decide to enter, ready to take the ridicule in trade for their right to the spotlight, but there are also splendid subplots involving friendships, the push-pull of the mother-daughter relationship, and the kindness of strangers, including an encouraging drag queen. Will's singular voice compels readers to think about all that goes into buildingand destroyingself-esteem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)