young adult books

Fat Camp

by Deborah Blumenthal.

Paperback

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Read an excerpt of Fat Camp.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Camp! Freedom, first kisses, summer fun...but not at Camp Calliope, a prison camp for the overweight. That's where Cam Phillips' parents have shipped her off to eat controlled portions, endure rigorous exercise, and sleep in a bunk full of girls who'd rather exchange recipes than ghost stories and gossip. Except for one cool girl from Texas, Faith Masters-who's normal enough to help her stay sane and temporarily replace her best friend, Evie. And then there's Jesse-the only thing close enough to drool-worthy on the camp's menu. Cam can totally relate to him, since his basketball-coach Dad sounds a lot like her perfectly thin, successful Mom. It looks like for the next eight weeks, only the issues (and not the food) on Cam's plate will be supersized.

From Entertainment Weekly.com
By her own definition, Cam Phillips is ''pudgy.'' ''And don't ask me what I weigh, I'm not telling,'' she informs the reader testily. She becomes even testier when her image-conscious parents — thin, the pair of them — pack her off to a weight-loss camp. What happens that summer to Cam, and to the friends she makes at camp (and the friend she leaves back at home), might be the stuff of melodrama, but it's the stuff teenagers will relate to, no matter what they weigh.

—TJ
Recommended ages: 13 and up
Entertainment Weekly.com

From ellegirl books
Teen girls sharing a cabin and late-night chats: Not too unusual, right? Except that they are all overweight-one is bulimic, one is depressed and one's a drama queen. Welcome to Fat Camp, where everyone exercises a zillion hours a day and eats like birds. Main character Cam Phillip is lovably chunky and honest, and the book, surprisingly, isn't an annoyingly virtuous diatribe about weight loss.

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