Starfish

This is beautiful, and though marketed as a book for a younger audience, can be one older readers love and appreciate too. It's about loving yourself when you're told not to - about regaining your freedom, your identity, and your confidence. Not only is this a debut, but it's an incredibly important commentary on the need we feel to look a certain way. Absolutely astounded, Fipps.

[cw: Spoilerfatphobia, bullying, emotional child abuse, animal abuse]4/5Funny coincidence to see another [b:Starfish 40611543 Starfish Akemi Dawn Bowman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529682481l/40611543.SY75.jpg 49731957] featuring an emotionally abusive relationship with a mother. I have a soft spot for Bowman's novel and a poor relationship with my own mother (involving fatphobia, too), and that's what colors my feelings here: I love 75% of this book, but the conclusion felt unfulfilling. Ellie's vulnerability and journey to empowerment are beautiful. She starts off shy and drowning, and through sessions with a rad therapist and the support of a small in-group, learns to love herself and make room to breathe. Her bullies include generic school bullies, strangers, siblings, but most prominently her own mother. That is the relationship with the most tension in the book: it's heartbreaking whenever Ellie highlights things her mother says or does to her, but worst and most emotional is when Ellie admits Spoilerthat her mother doesn't love her, and that's what moms are supposed to do. This is why the conclusion falls flat: SpoilerEllie stands up for herself and confronts her mother, and her mother apologizes, but what changes will she actually be putting into place? What therapies will the mother go through to address her fatphobia and how she has been hurting her daughter for so long without realizing it? What about their other children? Both parents have been aware of that bullying and didn't do much to stop it aside from one scene in the book where Ellie's brother is grounded for a month, a thread that is not brought up again - and the brother mocks her after it.Also unsatisfying is the tacked on nature of the final confrontation with the school bullies, who straight up kidnap Ellie's dog and face no repercussions for this. Where are the parents or authorities here?This is a good debut. I'm glad I listened to the audiobook, which had a sweet and vulnerable portrayal. The verse served it well.

This is so raw and upsetting and real. I didn't realize when I started this book that it was written in verse. It moves very fast and I read it in one setting. One of the best youth novels I've read this year.

A perfect book about fat phobia and bullying. I wanted to SCREAM at Ellie's awful mother and hug her dad and Catalina and friends. At the end with Gigi and the cake!?!? I thought I might lose it but I, so proud of Ellie for being brave and strong and not sinking to the mean girls' level.

Finally can Ellie's therapist be my therapist? I think having lightsaber battles would help me too!

whew I messy cried at this. Reading it gets you so in Ellie's head and so furious at the way her fatphobic mom treats her in addition to the school bullies.

I really liked how this shows the internal effects of bullying, and that it addresses that ~bullies are sad for their own reasons~ trope while not letting them off the hook for their actions. I think reading it would make fat tweens feel seen (even if some of the bullying might be more extreme than what happens at their school, it shows how some of the most hurtful words/phrases aren't necessarily the loudest) but also give them hope, and I think for thin kids reading it could give them a bit of empathy and understanding.

This book is written in verse and only took about an hour and half to read, but I know Ellie's story will stick with me for a long time.

Ellie is kind and thoughtful tween who wants her family and her peers to see her as a human. She is overweight, and no one seems to be able to look past that. Instead, her mother, her siblings, and her peers decide that bullying her and passive aggressively sharing articles about obesity will “fix her”, as if she is an inherently broken person. The scenes of bullying that Ellie endures are painful to read and become even more painful when you read the author's note that all of these incidents were based on the author's childhood experiences.

There is hope for Ellie, though, from her new friend and her father. Her father encourages her to see a therapist, who helps Ellie transform her thoughts.

This is a book that should be read by everyone, regardless of age. It delves into the cruelty that kids face every day and illustrates how the people who are supposed to love us the most can be the cruelest. This books get 4.5 stars for me because I felt it did not adequately address that the tormenting Ellie's mother put her through is a form of abuse. While it is possible to choose to love and forgive those who hurt us, the depth of Ellie's mother's abuse was not fully addressed and I felt her mother got off far too easy.