And, she did so with tremendous wit, humor and heart. This is one of the things I loved about the book: Ellen Potter did a brilliant job of slowly peeling away the layers of Owen and Jeremy's past to reveal how they've become who they are. Interesting.Īs the story unfolds, the reader slowly becomes aware of the terrifying incident Owen and Jeremy lived through and which now shapes their lives.
Ellen Potter once belonged to a group of Girls Who Are Boys and she knew a very brilliant boy much like Owen. When I spoke to the author, she said that SLOB is a bit of a departure for her because it's autobiographical in many ways. Owen's sister, Jeremy (also known as Caitlin), is a member of a group of girls who have decided to give themselves boy names -Girls Who Are Boys, or GWABs - and dress up like boys. But, then other clues begin to surface after he creates an invention to stop the thief and, the answer to the Oreo thefts may be even worse than he imagined. When his cookies begin to disappear and the container appears untouched, Owen has his suspicions about the most likely culprit. Owen is trying to lose weight, but one of his small joys in life is the three Oreo cookies he gets in his lunch, each day. Owen is regularly bullied at school, not only by the other kids in his 7th-grade class, but also by a vicious gym teacher who deliberately humiliates Owen, apparently for his own entertainment.
Owen invents things from found objects and he has a very unusual reason for trying to create an invention that will help him view the past - a specific date in the past.īeing smart and fat is a rough combination. He has, however, always had a high IQ which he's learned not to brag about. Owen is fat, but he hasn't always been that way. SLOB is the story of a brilliant, overweight boy named Owen. The good news is that even though I read SLOB several weeks ago, it is certainly a memorable tale. I've misplaced my copy of SLOB, so I can't quote from the book and don't have the text to refer to. This is becoming a far too typical refrain at Bookfoolery & Babble, but okay. Philomel Books - Middle readers/YA (ages 9-12)
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