In this sequel to “Fat Camp Commandos” the fat-camp dropouts are back – ready to raise a ruckus at a western dude ranch.
It’s not enough that Ralph and Sylvia Nebula and their dear friend, Celtic witch Mavis Goldfarb have absconded from fat camp. It’s not enough that they’ve perpetrated pranks on the people of Pookooksie. These anti-social tubs of lard won’t stop there. Now, they’re primed to challenge the great traditions of our nation, the things we learned as children in dark movie theaters, and in front of the TV during the four o’clock John Wayne spaghetti western.Yes, that’s right, theyre headed to the Great American West. Imagine the fat camp kids against the setting of the west: down the dusty street, tumbleweeds tumbling, the languid sun beating down. Doc Atkins, a dissolute gunfigter, will learn that these kids are not to be trifled with. If you give them a trifle, they will eat it.
Amazon.com Review
When Ralph and Sylvia Nebula’s pudgy parents get suckered into sending their chubby offspring to fat camp, the siblings first get angry–then they get revenge. Along with their feisty, sociopolitically savvy new friend, Mavis Goldfarb, they flee the bogus camp, where rattlesnakes run amok in the dried-up lake and clear-cut woods and inmates are forced to take classes in Creative Abuse and Motivation. (Lectures by Camp Noo Yoo owner, Dick Tator, run something like this: “Here’s what you have to look forward to as a fat adult… People laugh at you in the street, insult you, and throw doughnuts at you. You lose your job collecting dead skunks for the Fish and Wildlife Service, because you’re too fat. You wind up in prison for stealing pumpkin pies from the postdated pie store the day after Thanksgiving.”) Disgusted by the absurdity and prejudice at camp, the three declare war on culturally supported chauvinism, and spend the rest of the summer hiding out in Mavis’s house while her parents are away. Armed with biting wit and a fine-tuned sense of injustice, the friends alter billboards, heckle Junior Weight Whippers speakers, and entrap the local fat-quack doctor in his own lies on a call-in radio show. It’s not until a cop nabs them at one of their commando activities that their careers as undercover social reform activists are redirected–into an equally productive and empowering (and far more legal) channel.
Daniel Pinkwater’s legions of passionate fans will jump up and down for joy at his latest wacky, right-on-target story. Pinkwater, known for his National Public Radio commentaries, as well as his many kids’ book titles (The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, Lizard Music, 4 Fantastic Novels, 5 Novels, and the Werewolf Club series), never, ever shies away from controversial, weird, or eccentric topics, for which we are very grateful. By the way, there is no miraculous skinny finale in Fat Camp Commandos, thank goodness–the kids end the story fit, healthy, and as pleasingly plump as ever. (Ages 8 to 12) –Emilie Coulter
From Publishers Weekly
To protest their enrollment at a weight-loss camp, three children become pro-pudge activists, “terrorizing ordinary citizens to awaken them from their fat-prejudice.” Narrator Ralph Nebula and his sister, Sylvia, hate squalid Camp Noo Yoo, where the owner and camp director, Dick Tator, makes dire predictions about their adulthood: “You live alone in a nasty little room because no one will marry a big fat tub like you.” Ralph and Sylvia befriend “a little, round fatball of fury” named Mavis Goldfarb, escape Noo Yoo and hide out at Mavis’s house while her parents are away. In between delicious meals cooked by a butler, they commit acts of civil disobedience, including mixing up the diet and dessert books at the store. “Being an outlaw and a fat-revolutionary felt good,” says Ralph, pictured in a “Fat People Are Happier” T-shirt. Rash (The Robots Are Coming) contributes sly images that include a Charlie’s Angels-style silhouette of the trio brandishing a ca
