Little Little has been one of my favorite Young Adult books since I was a teenager and one of the few that I still love to read. It focuses on the upcoming 18th birthday party of Little Little La Belle, a town heiress and independent beauty who just so happens to be a dwarf (or as her pretentious mother describes she is "p.f. a perfectly formed little person.")She has two besotted suitors who are also small. One is Knox Lionel, AKA Little Lion, a televangelist with all of the oily charms and hypocrisy of his larger predecessors. The other is Sydney Cinnamon, a wisecracking orphaned teen who makes a living as a roach in TV commercials advertising insect spray. This is a teen romance that plays the romance in a light-hearted funny way, such as Little Little's annoyance with her wealthy parents who constantly think of new phrases for offensive words and Sydney's escapades with his fellow orphans who are equally deformed and create an annual awards called the Monsters.
Besides having fun with her protagonists, Kerr also takes great satiric points at evangelism, small towns,organizations, pushy parents, big business, and popular culture entertainment. But it is also a sweet story starring two very likeable characters that come out larger in personality than the people around them. ( )