Loved this book as a teenager. A nice coming of age book. ( )

When my parents went to teacher's college they took us in to the university library from time to time to borrow books. I read a few books at that time with a similar them of overweight children struggling with social pressures and I don't know if my parents had told me about them or if I found them myself, but I had such a weird relationship with these books that I loved and hated for reasons I couldn't vocalise. Perhaps that alone is telling.

This book is about a boy named Bobby Marks, he is a overweight 14 year old boy who is having a pretty bad beginning to his summer. He gets a summer job to mow lawns for a rich man who severely over works him all while being made fun of because of his weight. As the summer goes on Bobby starts to stand up for himself, and also loose some of the weight. This would be a great book for middle school age kids 5th-7th. It would be a good book to use in a health/social acceptance class when learning about peoples bodies and also how everyone is different, and that people shouldn't make fun of someone because of their appearance but if someone is to stand up for yourself and others who may be being bullied and not strong enough to stand up for themselves.

Grade Levels: 6-9
Category: Fiction, adventure
Read-Alouds: pp 35-49 (Bobby’s first day of mowing); 162 – 172 (how Bobby and his family have changed over the summer)

Summary: Bobby Marks hates summer. He is a very fat 14 year old city kid who spends his summers at a lake and is too embarrassed to take his clothes off to go swimming. This summer he gets a job mowing a very big lawn for the picky, stingy Dr. Kahn. Because of the mowing and the other hard physical labor Bobby has to do at Dr. Kahn’s Bobby looses about 30 pounds, finds out he can run and eventually take off his shirt without being embarrassed. While his body is physically changing so is his attitude, he changes from a scared little kid to a self-confident young man. Bobby earns the respect of some local people and doesn’t give into the bulling of the young man who cut Dr. Kahn’s lawn last summer.

Theme: Coming of age; the protagonist changes both mentally and physically during the summer before his 9th grade year as he looses weight and how he views his family and his friends.

Discussion Questions:
• Other than happening at a young age, how was Bobby’s “coming of age” similar to yours? How was it the same?
• If this story took place today Bobby’s being overweight might not have been as big of a problem for him. What problems do you think Bobby might have had to face if the story took place today? Explain please.
• Bobby’s mom enabled him to be fat by giving him food when he wasn’t hungry. Does any one enable your unhealthy habits, for example: eating, drinking, smoking?

Reader Response: Even though this book takes place fifty years ago, on the east coast I think our present day land locked kids can identify with the main character. I believe that kids today may face the “growing up” challenges Bob did at an earlier age but they still go through the same mental and physical processes that Bobby did. All kids go through a time when their bodies and their way of thinking about themselves and others change. All adolescents encounter fighting with and telling or not telling stories about their siblings and all kids at some point in their lives have times when they just can’t figure out where their parents are coming from.

Megan Reed
EDCI 4120
6/20/08

Lipsyte, R. (1977). One fat summer. New York: Harper & Row.
Grade Levels 6-10
Category Realistic Fiction
Read Alouds pp. 1-13(First Chapter); pp. 21-31(First day at Dr. Kahn house); pp. 133-151(The Last fight & Bob stands up to Dr. Kahn).
Summary Bob is fourteen years old and at the beginning of the summer he weighed over two hundred pounds. He hated summer because you don’t wear much close and there is no way to hide the fat. His best friend Joannie is one of the only people that he feels he can really talk to. She happens to be made fun of as much as he does, not because of fat but because she has an enormous nose. They had big plans for the summer until she tells him that she has to go to the city for a while and she wont say why. Bob’s dad doesn’t want him to just sit around all summer. He wants him to go to camp but Bob thinks he is too old. So Bob gets a job as a lawnmower. Throughout the summer Bob loses weight and it turns out that Joannie went back to the city to get a nose job. All summer long Bob is harassed by an older boy until he gets in a big fight at the end of the summer and almost kills the boy by holding him under water.
Discussion Questions If Dr Kahn wouldn’t have been as tough on Bob would he ever have been motivated enough to lose the weight. What made Bob realize that his role model Peter didn’t know anymore about being a man than Bob did? What made Bob finally ask Dr Kahn for a raise?
Reader Response I liked this book. It kept me interested. I liked how Bob kept daydreaming to help him get through the long days mowing the lawn. I do this myself when I am doing something that I don’t want to do. I had a lot of empathy for Bob. His best friend left him for the summer and then when she came back she didn’t have the one thing that made them such good friends. It’s strange to think that something like plastic surgery can change a friendship so much. In this case it was because they no longer had her nose and his weight in common.