Stuffed (Orca Soundings)

Eric Walters
Orca Book Publishers (2006)
ISBN 9781551435008
Reviewed by Gracie Fowler (age 14) for Reader Views (6/07)

Stuffed is about three teenagers who watched a movie about the dangers of fast food, particularly a place named Frankie’s (Super size me, anyone?). While at first the main character, Ian, doesn’t take to the idea of giving up his fries, his friend Julia jumps right into the idea of fasting from fast food, and her doormat boyfriend and Ian’s best friend, Oswald, agrees with her (although we all know he’s craving a double cheeseburger). But after Ian decides that he could incorporate the anti-Frankie’s buzz with his mass communication project in computer science, he writes a letter begging people not to eat at Frankie’s on Friday the 13th. He sends this message to forty of his friends (via MSN) and asks them to send the message to forty of their friends.

By the next day, the message has crossed the Atlantic Ocean and is all over America. When Ian gets home, he has more than 600 emails, mostly in support of his project. But one of those emails was definitely not supportive. It was from Frankie’s lawyers, telling him that if he continued to spread the message, he would be sued. But the lawyers didn’t know something—Ian’s parents are lawyers too. They schedule a meeting, and Frankie’s suggests a bribe: If Ian calls off the boycott, Frankie’s will supply a free lunch to everyone at his school on Friday the 13th. Ian and Julia can’t believe their ears, and say they will decide later. This splits the school in half…and the drama continues. The story ends with unsurprising results and an unlikely, but expected romance.

The story plot within itself was good, but the beginning was hard to get through and the middle seemed incomplete, although I must say, the lawyer humor was pretty funny. I would recommend “Stuffed” to kids beginning middle school, and is a great way to show kids that one person can make a difference.

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