Outrage explodes over rhyming ‘diet’ picture book

LEANNE ITALIE

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Mes­sages of good health and pos­i­tive self-esteem for girls aren’t hard to come by in kid lit, so what’s the deal with all the atten­tion for a not-yet-published rhyming pic­ture book about an obese, unhappy 14-year-old named Maggie?

The title, for starters: Mag­gie Goes on a Diet.

For sec­onds, like-wildfire cir­cu­la­tion of a blurb describ­ing how the bul­lied girl is trans­formed through time, exer­cise and hard work into a pop­u­lar, con­fi­dent and aver­age size soc­cer star. And cover art show­ing her wist­fully hold­ing up a Cin­derella dress as she stares at her imag­ined, much slim­mer self in a full-length mirror.

And an inside page, the only one most peo­ple have seen, that shows her hunched over the fridge dur­ing a two-fisted eat­ing binge.

Thirds? Real teenagers have long moved on from rhyming pic­ture books and the read­ing level for Hawaii dad Paul Kramer’s ama­teur­ish, self-published effort is rec­om­mended on Ama­zon for kids ages 4 to 8.

The online mess for Kramer began recently with out­raged com­menters on Ama­zon, where pre-orders haven’t pro­pelled Mag­gie any­where near the top of the rank­ings. There’s now a “savemag­gie” hash­tag on Twit­ter, a “Say No to Mag­gie Goes on a Diet” Face­book page, calls for a boy­cott and demands that Ama­zon and Barnes & Noble pull the book.

Kramer won’t dis­close how many orders he has for Mag­gie, which isn’t out until Octo­ber. While most of the atten­tion has been neg­a­tive, he said, there are sup­port­ers, like this one who responded to a book basher on Twit­ter: “She’s 14, not 6. Are you seri­ously sug­gest­ing that, with the obe­sity prob­lem in this coun­try, that a book teach­ing chil­dren to exer­cise and eat right, is some­how IMMORAL? I bet your fat.”

Kramer, who went on “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica” to defend the book, already has regrets, though using the word “diet” isn’t one of them. Diet, he said, isn’t a dirty word as many of his angry crit­ics have declared. Even for a book clearly most appro­pri­ate for lit­tle kids? He insists he didn’t have 4-year-olds in mind, think­ing more along the lines of 8 and up.

“The main mes­sage was that Mag­gie went on a diet pre­dom­i­nantly because she loves sports and wanted to be able to run faster, bend more eas­ily and be bet­ter able to play sports more effec­tively,” Kramer told The Asso­ci­ated Press by phone from Maui, where he lives with his wife and soccer-loving, 16-year-old son.

Kramer, who strug­gled with obe­sity as a child and a young adult and still works to keep the pounds off, wishes Maggie’s fan­tasy self in the mir­ror wasn’t quite so thin on the book’s cover. He also wishes her trans­for­ma­tion through weight loss wasn’t quite so much — 51 pounds in a lit­tle more than eight months.

“Now that I see the con­tro­versy I would say that I would have had her lose about 30 pounds and still have a lit­tle way to go,” said Kramer, who’s nei­ther physi­cian nor nutri­tion expert.

He said he’s just a guy who wants to inspire over­weight kids to be healthy.

“I regret that peo­ple asso­ci­ated the word ‘diet’ as me try­ing to push diet­ing on 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds. I’m not,” Kramer said. “To me, diet means a change of habits, eat­ing nutri­tiously, los­ing unhealthy weight.”

Leslie Sanders, med­ical direc­tor of the Eat­ing Dis­or­der Pro­gram at Goryeb Children’s Cen­ter in Sum­mit, N.J., thinks Kramer’s ref­er­ences to diet­ing in a rhyming pic­ture book fea­tur­ing a teen girl are unfor­tu­nate. The same goes for the notion that a child’s key to suc­cess, beauty and pop­u­lar­ity is being thin.

“There’s a mis­match here,” Sanders said. “You’ve got a rhyming book you’re read­ing to a 4-year-old or a 6-year-old about a teenager focused on weight and eat­ing. Why should young chil­dren be think­ing about weight? There’s no rea­son to have lit­er­a­ture about diet­ing for young chil­dren at all.”

In addi­tion, most lit­tle kids don’t sit down as Mag­gie the teen does once her “diet” begins and whip up their own oat­meal with yogurt and fruit, or pre­pare their own turkey sand­wich with mus­tard and let­tuce, fol­lowed by a din­ner of veg­eta­bles “with var­i­ous pro­teins,” as the book describes.

You know who makes those choices for lit­tle kids? Their par­ents, Sanders said. The ones that don’t appear in the book about Mag­gie the red pig­tailed teen. In fact, there are no adults in the book at all.

That dis­turbs Arden Greenspan-Goldberg, a New York City psy­chother­a­pist who spe­cial­izes in eat­ing dis­or­ders and has a 22-year-old daughter.

“As women and moth­ers, we have our work cut out for us,” she said. “We hope that when our girls look in the mir­ror, they like what they see.”

Con­trary to the online flash mob, Mag­gie does stand up to her tor­menters, though, in her own sad, quiet way.

“Most of the times Mag­gie did not wish to respond or counter attack,” Kramer writes. “On rare occa­sions Mag­gie got so mad she could not hold back. She said, ‘Is your life so bor­ing that you have noth­ing else bet­ter to do? How would you like it and how would you feel if every­one picked on you? So lose your stinger and make like a bee and buzz on through.’”

Once Mag­gie drops the weight, she not only gains gal pals but enjoys the atten­tion of, urg, guys, another lit­tle some­thing that young girls don’t really need to think about.

She also gets higher grades and is invited to her first sleep­over, bring­ing along deodor­ant spray so she doesn’t have to worry about leav­ing a smell when she uses the bathroom.

Mean­while, back on the soc­cer field, the teen encoun­ters a pudgy, smaller girl as she prac­tices and offers some tips. “She reminded Mag­gie of how Mag­gie was before she lost the weight,” Kramer writes.

The book con­cludes, as Mag­gie col­lects a soc­cer tro­phy: “It is sad that peo­ple are judged mainly because of how they look. A pretty cover does not nec­es­sar­ily guar­an­tee a good book.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.