Artichoke’s Heart

© 2008, Dutton Juvenile

“Mother spent $700 on a treadmill ‘from Santa’ that I will never use.”

Rosemary Goode receives for Christmas: one $700 treadmill,  two diet books, three tickets to the Healing the Fat Girl Within conference, and a collection of Emily Dickinson poems.  As a girl who has always been fat, with a mother and aunt who have always been skinny,  Rosemary has been harassed by her size 0 Aunt Mary about losing weight for as long as she can remember, and longs for her mother to just once take her side instead of her Aunt’s.   The more Rosemary is pushed to lose weight,  the more she eats. And eats. And eats.  Until after Christmas break, her weight balloons to an all-time high of 203 pounds.  Her only pair of pants that fit?  Her sweat pants, and even they are tight!  After an older overweight woman at her mother’s well-known beauty salon claims she looked just like Rosemary, Rosemary finally has her moment of realization and decides to lose weight, once and for all. Driven by a new crush at school – the football star who is himself  “enormously strapping,” Rosemary gives up her “other men – Mr. Hershey, Mr. Reese’s, Mr. M&M.”  But just as she is starting to make progress (both with her weight and with her crush), her mother is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of cancer.  For the first time, Rosemary doesn’t turn to food as her comfort and her crutch, she decides to see her new diet through – no matter what it takes.

Despite the sheer terror of diet, exercise, and romance, Rosemary starts to focus on the things she wants (even though she doesn’t feel that she is deserving of them – at least not yet).  A happy family, a perky best friend, an enormous strapping jock boy to call her very own.  This is all Rosemary wants – well that and to be thin. Without telling her mother or her aunt, Rosemary starts drinking Pounds-Away instead of eating her regular meals.  She uses her treadmill for more than just drying her undergarments in her room.  She even befriends one of the most popular girls at school during a impromptu outside walk.  But as the pounds start to drop off, Rosemary must come to terms with more than just weight loss.  If thin is the answer – how come there are still so many questions?

A fast paced, one sitting read – Artichoke’s Heart tells the story of family, friendship, and first love while figuring out who you are underneath the fat.

A good book for girl’s of any shape or size – appropriate for ages 13+

Currently Reading – You Know Where to Find Me by Rachel Cohn

In School Read Alouds: Hunger Games by Suzzane Collins (1st); The Missing, Book 1:Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix (5th)