I was eleven years old and I was in my school library, strolling through the aisles, trying to decide what to read next.

I remember the exact moment when I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted to be a writer. And if she got hungry in the middle of the night, she could nibble on her bed.

There was one woman, for instance, who was sort of chubby and always cheerful, so I imagined that she lived in an apartment made entirely of chocolate! I imagined that her walls were made of chocolate, so she could lick them, and her furniture was chocolate, and she had a chocolate refrigerator that only contained chocolate eggs and chocolate milk. I would watch people in the building’s elevator (most of whom I knew nothing about) and make up crazy stories about their apartments. In fact, the idea for Olivia Kidney came from a game I used to play when I was about eight or nine years old. Like my character, Olivia Kidney, I grew up in a high-rise apartment building in New York City’s Upper West Side. This is a book for everyone: smart, devious, overweight, underweight, shy, courageous and everyone in between.' - The Children's Book Review 'Potter delicately and confidently delivers a pitch-perfect story of self-worth. With her trademark humor, Ellen Potter has created a larger-than-life character and story whose weight is immense when measured in heart. That no matter how large he is on the outside, he doesn't have to feel small on the inside. But it will take a revelation, not a cool invention, for Owen to see that the answer is not in the past, but the present. He's sure that if only he can get the TV to work, things will start to make sense. Or why a diabolical, scar-faced bully at school seems to be on a mission to destroy him. Or why his sister suddenly wants to be called by a boy's name. Like how his Oreos keep disappearing from his lunch. But he also invents cool contraptions-like a TV that can show the past-because there is something that happened two years ago which he needs to see if he ever hopes to unravel a dreadful mystery.īut inventor or not, there is a lot Owen can't figure out. Twelve-year-old Owen Birnbaum is the fattest kid in school. Outrageously funny and smart, this story of an obese boy who takes on his bullies is as heartwarming as it is clever. *'A sensitive, touching, and sometimes heartbreakingly funny picture of middle school life.'- School Library Journal, starred review

Slob by Ellen Potter