The Pig-Out Blues

by Jan Greenberg

A slightly overweight, broke, and bored fifteen-year-old slowly learns to handle her two major problems--her eating habits and her mother.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction

120 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1982

About the author

Jan Greenberg is an award-winning author celebrated for her books about art and artists. Her collaborations with Sandra Jordan include Action Jackson and Christo and Jean-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond, both honored for excellence in nonfiction. Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of an Artist earned a Sibert Honor and became a Common Core text exemplar. She later co-authored Ballet for Martha and The Mad Potter, each receiving starred reviews and Sibert Honors. In 2013, she and Jordan received the Children’s Book Guild Award. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fifteen-year-old Jodie is overweight (by early 80s standards: 120lbs at 5ft tall) and has issues with emotional eating and a truly overbearing mother. Yep, it's got some cringe-worthy 80s moments, but it also has Shakespeare, Dickens, Ogden Nash, and a nod to From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

9/69 tbr box 2015.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books in high school, and it holds up over time. It portrays an excellent picture of a teenager with a tendency to overeat and showcases both healthy and unhealthy ways to lose it. All the characters are memorable, from the second-nature criticism of her overbearing mother ("Your arms are as thick as tree trunks") to her super-thin best friend and said friend's cute older brother, to the kindness of the health food store owner who eventually gives her a job.

She does slip up and gain weight back at one point (with such memorable imagery -- "In layers of clothing, I pad around the apartment. Like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter, or a big rubber bear, I had room to stretch, to grow."), but the lovely thing is that in the end, it's not really a story about weight loss or lack thereof, but of Josie finding acceptance for herself at school, through the production of Romeo and Juliet, and at home, which includes learning to accept her mother.