The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

by Carolyn Mackler, read by Johanna Parker

Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves has a larger-than-average body and a plus-size inferiority complex, especially when she compares herself to her slim, brilliant, picture-perfect family. But that’s before a shocking phone call — and a horrifying allegation — about her rugby-star brother changes everything. With irreverent humor and surprising gravity, Carolyn Mackler creates an endearingly blunt heroine who speaks to every teen who struggles with family expectations, and proves that the most impressive achievement is to be true to yourself.

Why this book?

I feel like a broken record. This is yet another book I read for my YA class. I chose this one from the banned and challenged books section. I’m pretty excited to talk about this in our next class. It should be a lot of fun. I feel like I’ve been giving horrible book talks so my friend, Jess, told me to just act like I was telling her about a book I loved because she always wants to read books I tell her about. So I’m going to try that in class this weekend. Anyway, this book is great and I can’t believe anyone would want to ban it.

Witty main character

Virginia is awesome and it made me sad that she didn’t realize that in the beginning. I think there was some part of her that liked herself, but she kept shoving it down because of all the things people said about her. She wasn’t being herself completely because she was letting other people make certain decisions about her life. Her family really frustrated me. I wanted to punch her mother on several occasions. She made Virginia feel horrible about her body. Her father and brother weren’t much better. She has some great friends though, and she has to learn to stop pushing them away.

Dealing with body image

This book is less plot and more character development. Though there are interesting things that happen and change Virginia’s life dramatically, it was more about her learning to be herself and love herself. She had spent so much of her life being ashamed of her body because that’s what everyone taught her to do. It takes a lot for her to learn to love herself and her body. I think this would be a very rewarding book for anyone who has body image issues. I was really drawn in by her voice and her story. That said, I think this book would have spoken to me more as a teen than it does now.

Why was this banned?

So why is this book on the frequently challenged/banned books list? According to ALA, it because there’s offensive language, it’s sexually explicit, and it’s unsuited to the age group. Let me call bullshit on all of that. First, there’s no language used in this book that teens don’t use themselves. Second, I can’t understand how this could possibly be sexually explicit. Perhaps, my idea and someone else’s idea of sexually explicit are different. I do sometimes read erotica, after all. Still, there’s never really an account of anyone having sex in this book. Yeah, Virginia and Froggy fool around (that’s not really a spoiler) and she talks about sex, but there’s never a sex scene. I could go into my thoughts on sex in teen books, but I’ll save that for a discussion post, yes? Third, this is in no way unsuited to the age group. In fact, it’s perfectly suited to the age group. That’s why I had a tiny problem relating it to my life. I’ve already been through everything Virginia’s going through. I went through it as a teen. I’d say this book is definitely for teens.

Great Narration

So, I completely forgot to write something about the audio narration. My bad. Since I don’t want to add too much to an already lengthy review, I’ll just say that it was great. I’ve listened to audios read by Johanna Parker before (she reads the audios for the Sookie Stackhouse series) and I’ve always enjoyed her. This was no different. I highly recommend the audio.