Puddin'

Puddin'

YA/adult fiction
"MELISSA: I think we should let them act on their own.
ME [Callie]: I don't know. Will they feel that we're abandoning them?
SAM: Listen, y'all. It's my senior year and this season is already
going down in flames. I feel like we might as well make it
memorable. But either all three of us go or none of us go. Y'all
know where I stand."
Callie's mother led the Clover City High School Shamrocks to
become 1992 National Dance Team Champions. Callie has been primed to
follow in her mom's footsteps. Dance is her life. She is devastated
when, right before regionals, the local gym that is the team's primary
sponsor pulls out.
Callie isn't the only one who's upset. The team decides on a
revenge prank. What was supposed to be a mere toilet papering evolves
quickly into a total trashing of the place. Callie is identified.
The rest of the team decides to let her take the fall. The gym owner,
rather than pressing charges, lets her work off the damages.
"But that [becoming thin] never happened, and I don't think it
ever will. My magic truth--the thing that has changed everything for
me--is this: the body I have shouldn't change how deserving I am of
my dreams. I stopped obsessing over my body being too round or too
wide or too lumpy. Because I'm not too much of anything. I'm just
enough. Even when I don't feel like I am."
Along with crafts, Millie and her mother have bonded over diets
and other weight loss strategies. Only now Millie has decided to stop
trying in vain to bring out her inner thin girl. This is the summer
she plans to attend a competitive broadcast journalism camp instead of
returning to weight loss camp. Her mom is not going to take the news
well.
Millie works for her uncle and aunt who own the gym. She's the
one who finds the place trashed. When she learns that she will be
working with Callie, who isn't exactly nice to kids not in her elite
group, she feels a sense of doom.
So how will this very odd couple play out?
You've gotta read Julie Murphy's Puddin' and see. With sumner
vaca on the horizon I plan to get my hands on Murphy's previous books
including the companion volume to Puddin', Dumplin'.
On a personal note, I did manage to get a ride home Monday night. It
snowed again Tuesday. So much for Puxatawny Phil not seeing his
shadow! School is going well. Work is going very well. I'm staying
on over the summer. There was a stuff an animal event for Pride
Week. I got a darling rainbow striped zebra with pink eyes. I named
them Florence because I promised my work friend, Flo, that I would
name something after her.
Just two more weeks to the Drag Show!
A great big shout out goes out to all the fine folks celebrating Pride
Week.
jules hathaway


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