The Doughnut Dropout

by E.W. Hildick, Kilo Kimoda (Illustrator)

After the doughnut eating champion of the country decides to retire at age thirteen, he receives a request from the White House to compete against the Russian champion for the world title.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

E.W. (Edmund Wallace) Hildick was a British children's book author. He was born in Bradford, England in 1925. After two years service in the Royal Air Force he became a secondary school teacher, then a writer, later moving to the United States to become editor of a literary magazine. He died in London in 2001.

Reviews

[Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

the strange tale of a kid who is born unbeknownst into a family of competitive eaters. his grandfather grooms him for his trade, and he faces a whole host of random opponents - including the wolf from wisconsin and a guy who stuffs food in his beard. in the end, he faces some russian prodigy in an international mano a mano competition. they decide to compete in neutral malta, and there are all these outdated but amusing cold war overtones. in the end, both prodigies decide to mirror each other bite for bite - called "counterbiting" - and tie the match so that they can both become normal kids again....

i think this is out of print so you'll have to amazon it.

[Todd Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book years ago when I was probably a little younger than the main character, Adam Trenchard. (12) I always remembered the book but not the title. Many thanks to my sister-in-law for finding it for me and letting me know that there was still a copy in our local library. I do not think that it is the same copy that I read all those years ago because the book seems slightly smaller, but after more than 30 years I may not be remembering correctly.

Adam comes from a family of competitive eaters and on his 12th birthday his Grandpa convinces him to train to become the National Doughnut Eating Champion and bring home the Golden Doughnut. Adam is a great eater with lots of natural ability but he is also a 12 year old boy and has many interests. I will let you read the book to see how his story unfolds.

In 12th Grade English Mrs. Petersen taught us how to find the symbolism in books but she also told us that sometimes you can look too hard and "find" things that are not there. I suppose that there may be some lessons to be learned from this book but it is also just a really fun read. It treats the Competitive Eating world as if the contestants were looked up to like Professional Athletes. The book includes clippings from such publications as Confectioner Chronicle and The Pro-Eaters Digest. Some of the Professional Eaters have nicknames like the Nebraska Nosher and the Gorger from Georgia. Adam himself is dubbed the Kid from Cakeboro. Cakeboro, NY being the town that Adam is from.

I really loved reading this book again after so many years. It is a nice light read and only took me a few hours of dedicated reading to get it done.