Stuffed

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Frequently, Eric Walters utilizes a contemporary happening as a jumping
off point for his fiction. In this high-interest, low-vocabulary novel,
his stimulus was Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film, Super Size Me, which
Walters transforms into a documentary titled Stuffed that Ian Cheevers,
15, views with his fellow New York classmates. The film, which paints
Frankie’s Fast Food Restaurants as a purveyor of unhealthy food, leads
to a lively class discussion and ultimately to Ian’s idea to organize
a local boycott of the chain on Friday, April 13, a date some two weeks
away. However, the boycott, aka Frankie’s Free Friday, becomes more
widespread when Ian combines the idea with his computer science project
on how the Internet—specifically email—can be used to spread a
message.

After Frankie’s becomes aware of the emerging national implications
of the boycott, the company sics its lawyers on Ian, a challenge Ian’s
lawyer parents relish. Playing dirty, Frankie’s then offers a free
lunch to the 1,500 students in Ian’s school on April 13, providing Ian
will go online and attempt to quash the boycott. Caught between those
teens who enjoy Frankie’s food and definitely want the free meal and
those who support the boycott, Ian is provided with a solution by his
law teacher, someone with whom Ian had earlier clashed.

Throughout the book, Walters weaves an interesting subplot involving
Ian’s two best friends, Julia and Oswald, who have recently become a
couple, a situation that disrupts the trio’s previous harmony.
Recommended.