The Earth, My Butt, & Other Big Round Things

Virginia is a young girl who is plump. Her mother is an exercise fiend, while her father likes to watch skinny women on the television. She also has two siblings, Anais and Byron. Her older sister is doing work with the Peace Corps in Africa.

The book deals with a number of things, one of them being the fact that Virgina is overweight and has body image problems. This leads her to go on a diet and, for a while, she takes it to an extreme.

Her older brother gets suspended from college for date rape, and a lot of things change. Virginia has to deal with that plus her weight plus a guy she'd like as a boyfriend plus her mother.

Some girls might crumble, but Virgina finds the inner strength she's had all along to finally figure out what she wants to do in relation to her weight, appearances, preferences, etc, and she does them. It means doing some things her mother doesn't like, but it all turns out well.

The good thing about the book is that Virginia is able to go through all these trials but still not only come out on top but ends up a better person than she ever had been. The only complaint I would have is the use of the too-often-used-in-stories theme of the mother or father who is some kind of psychiatrist/psychologist who's an expert in child behavior but doesn't act like it around their own children.

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