Fum

February 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Once upon a time in the magically realistic State of Illinois, Corinthia Bledsoe must come to terms with how she is different. Aside from her size, which is in the neighborhood of eight feet tall, Corinthia sees visions of tornadoes, cows deposited in the sanctuary of the school's field house, and a flock of Canada geese that proceed to destroy the sacred football field. Through it all, Corinthia tries to maintain a sense of normalcy; if such can be achieved in a world populated with characters possessing names like Denton Smock and Margo Ticonderoga. Her woes are told in such beautifully crafted-if somewhat preoccupied with genitalia-prose and nuanced, quirky observations that readers will find themselves pausing to think about, and some will even begin to dig for a suspected, deeper allegorical meaning. To augment this lovely tale about the struggles of being different in high school, Rapp adds the subplot of Billy Ball, as told to "Dave," Billy's diary. He's small, and has a condition that renders him flatulent, but not in the funny way characteristic of Don Calame's stories. Though opposite in many ways, the two characters share the very real pain of being "different" in an environment where differences are not safe and where adults allow social predation to continue. VERDICT This book that will appeal to those who appreciate Terry Pratchett's and Libba Bray's works.-Jodeana Kruse, R.A. Long High School, Longview, WA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2018
A teen has prophetic visions.Sixteen-year-old Corinthia sees in her mind--correctly--that three tornadoes will hit Lugo, Illinois, ripping the roof off her high school's field house and leaving a cow behind. Frantic to warn everyone, she breaks a classroom door only to be violently tackled by the staff. She's suspended largely because of everyone's discomfort with her: she's 7 feet 4 inches tall, with a "Paul Bunyanesque skull" and teeth "as long, wide, and dimpled as dominoes." While the text frames others as unsavory too, Corinthia's explicitly "grotesque," belying a feeble claim that she is a "beauty"; indeed she has hands like "fish-belly white slabs" and nosebleeds that look like her face is menstruating--a "very large, crazy monster person." Her 287 pounds supposedly breaks not one but two toilets and necessitates a new one built from custom materials, which is simply and gratuitously inaccurate. Several nihilistic plot threads wind bleakly around Corinthia, involving a white boy with a "disturbing" Native American fixation who is initially presented as a potential school-shooter threat but then pivots unexpectedly and tragically; variously disfigured children; and an actual traveling freak show. A brother disappears, unexplained; Corinthia, who's white, develops a relationship with a "grown-ass," dying black criminal who calls himself a "nigga," speaks in dialect, and emits "a faint animal fragrance."A meandering, dehumanizing tale characterized by a tenacious abhorrence of the body. (Fiction. 14-adult)

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February 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 Corinthia Bledsoe's gigantism first manifested when she was 11. Now a junior at Lugo Memorial High School, whip-smart Corinthia stands a towering seven-foot-four. To top it off, lately she's been cursed with ominous premonitionsand they're coming true. Billy Ball, meanwhile, is a freshman at Corinthia's southern Illinois school. His father recently passed away, his mother's hair is falling out in thick clumps, and he's chronicling it all in his diary, named Dave. Billy's also compiling a list of those who have thrown him shade and it's growing. Rapp interweaves these narratives and several othersa brother's disappearance, a torrent of mysteriously scrawled FUMs, wolves lurking at the town's borderinto a provocative balancing act. It doesn't always work; the ever-fluctuating kid and adult POVs make it upsettingly bewildering where Rapp's sympathies lie, and the book's stereotype-dependent central relationship doesn't always ring true. Still, elsewhere, Rapp's knack for chilling realism and John Irvingesque absurdism produces moments of sheer hilarity, sharp insight, and devastating emotion. Readers seeking a dark fairy tale of grotesque, gigantic proportions better buckle up: this is a wild one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)