Module 7 - SLOB

Bibliographic Information

Potter, E. (2009). SLOB. New York: Penguin Young Readers Group.

Summary

The main character of this story, Owen Birnbaum, is an overweight, extremely smart twelve year old.  He discusses the difficulties he is having in school with both being overweight, and being a brain.  He uses a lot of humor when describing himself, but the reader can still feel his suffering with all of the teasing and harassment that he is enduring.

The coach is merciless and ridicules any student that is not athletically inclined.  The coach gives instructions to the non-athletic boys that are impossible to do and because Owen knows the laws of physics, he knows the coach is setting the boys up for failure.  When Owen refuses to follow the coach’s instructions on how to do a somersault, the coach takes straps and buckles and straps Owen’s torso like a dog halter with the coach holding the leash end.  For ten minutes the coach drags and yanks Owen all across the floor.  Owen does not report the incident with the coach because he feels it would just make his life even more miserable.

Owen meets a new student, Mason Rigg, who has severe scarring on one side of his face.  Mason always eats lunch by himself because the children at the school have very scary assumptions about how Mason got his scarring.  Owen befriends Mason and is told that all of the scarring came from Mason having an epileptic seizure while he was in the shower.  During the seizure, his elbow turned off the cold water, so he scalded the side of his face with hot water throughout the whole seizure.

We soon find out the Owen is trying to make an invention, called Nemesis, which will bounce a radio telescope off a star and can be programmed to a surveillance camera from previous years.  His parents were murdered almost two years ago, and Owen wants to find the culprit.  He doesn’t actually want to see his parent’s death; he just wants to see who leaves his parents deli on that date and time.

Owen’s weight gain all started shortly after his parent’s death.  He partially holds himself accountable.  He was downstairs in the basement with his sister when he overheard gunshots and yelling, but instead of going upstairs, he held his sister’s mouth closed and held her in place.  This probably saved his and his sister’s life, but he feels guilt that he did not go up and help his parents.

The title SLOB is because of the deli.  Most children want to have the last words of their parents be something very inspirational, but Owen cherishes and saves a piece of paper that has the word SLOB written on it.  It was his mother’s very last note to him.  The letters SLOB stand for salami on an onion bagel.

Owen thinks his machine is working and thinks he will soon find out who the murderer is when he realizes that his sister has played a trick on him.  She did not do it deliberately, but she made him think Nemesis was working just because it seemed to bring him out of his depression and got him interested in something.

The book ends three months after he finds out that Nemesis won’t show him his parents’ murderers.  He has a new friend (Mason), he recently lost a considerable amount of weight, and the coach gets in trouble for his actions with the non-athletic students.

Impressions

This book had so much humor.  It accurately shows all of the “clicks” (jocks, brains, etc) that are formed in the middle school years.  The coach is a horrible, horrible person, but Owen is able to overcome all of the coach’s bullying and figures out that he is much smarter than this man.  We find in the end that Owen is not obsessing so much over his parents’ death and his inability to help them, and that he is starting to be happy with his new mom (the 911 operator that helped him on the night of the murders).  I was very surprised when he took the SLOB note, tore it up, and threw it into the river with a prayer that the murderer would become a better person.  I really thought that he would keep this last little memento of his mother forever.

Reviews

Owen is the fattest-and smartest-seventh grader in his New York City school. When he's not ducking the school bully or trying to survive the world's most sadistic P.E. teacher, he invents things. Currently Owen has two projects-a TV that will show events in the past and a trap to catch the thief who keeps stealing the Oreos from his lunchbox. There's a lot of middle school banter and adolescent dialogue. However, what begins as a lighthearted adventure gradually takes on a darker tone. Owen calls his invention Nemesis and insists that it needs to reach exactly two years back. As the story evolves, readers learn that there are places in town where he feels distinctly uncomfortable, and that he treasures a note that says only "SLOB." Step by step, Owen reveals the tragedy behind his concerns. Two years earlier, he was hiding in the basement of the family store, listening as his parents were killed by an intruder. Adopted by the 911 operator who took his call after the murders, he dreams of identifying the perpetrator. Although Nemesis fails to solve the crime, Owen is finally able to find closure, with help from his sister, their friends, and, surprisingly, from the dreaded bully himself. A sensitive, touching, and sometimes heartbreakingly funny picture of middle school life.

Knight, Elaine E. (2009, July 1). [Review of SLOB]. School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6668068.html

An intriguingly offbeat mystery concerning the theft of cookies from a boy's lunch, at turns humorous, suspenseful and poignant. Intelligent Owen is the fattest kid in his middle school, having packed on the pounds after a major upheaval in his life caused him to begin turning to food as a source of comfort. His younger sister, who has joined up with a group at school called Girls Who Are Boys (GWAB) and taken to insisting that others call her Jeremy, coped by growing tougher. Owen, on the other hand, has become an object of ridicule due to his weight. While the Oreo heist provides the main premise for Owen to engage with other kids at school, there are a number of secondary mysteries crafted alongside it, each of them raising unexpected questions that are neatly wrapped up by the novel's end. While some readers may balk at some of its more convenient coincidences, fans of Jerry Spinelli and others of his ilk may especially enjoy it and will be held rapt.

(2009, April 15). [Review of SLOB]. Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/childrens-books/ellen-potter/slob/

Library Use

Librarians could use this book for promoting realistic fiction.  I think it’s a great example of real life issues common and not-so-common in middle school.  I think it would also work for a boy’s book discussion.  With the main character being a boy, they might relate to him well.