I think I’ve
mentioned before that not only am I a reality television fan, but it also makes
up one of my research strands. I’ve published several articles on using reality
television in the classroom (one of the challenges I hold in my class is to
take my preservice teachers to Office Depot, give them $50 pretend dollars, and
have them “buy” the supplies they think they need for their first classrooms.
It was an activity I used to do in the classroom—it became much better when
they could actually go to a store).
Rather than watch
the “lifestyle” shows, I tend to watch the competition shows, like Project Runway, Top Chef, America’s Next Top
Model, American Idol, and
occasionally the Biggest Loser. I
stopped watching it when they didn’t have Jillian and early on when contestants
had to vote each other off (I hate that). And, I was extremely nervous last
season when they included 3 children on the show (they were not contestants and
they did not weigh them).
Which is why the
premise of Ken Baker’s new book How I Got
Skinny, Famous and Fell Madly in Love (scheduled to come out in May)
worried me. Here’s a book about a teenage girl, Emery, who agrees to go on a
reality television show. The premise of the show, Fifty Pounds to Freedom, is that Emery agrees to work with a team
of experts in order to lose fifty pounds in fifty days. For reasons that I
won’t spoil, she agrees to appear on the show for a number of reasons.
Another set of
absent/ bad parents appears in this book (I alluded to the momager in my last
post) and a misguided, narcissistic, spoiled sibling. But, Emery is the star of
the book and rightly so. She’s smart and funny and, for the most part, well aware
of the intentions of those around her. It’s a book for high schoolers and right
after I finished reading it, I gave it to my favorite librarian and asked her
to read it. I just wanted to talk to somebody about it.
What I like about
this book is it’s so very timely. Baker focuses on the popularity of reality
television and Youtube and their power to make people overnight sensations and
that some teenagers aspire to earn that kind of fame. What I wonder about is
the lack of consequences Emery faces. Her life hasn’t been easy, but she takes
some actions in the last third of the book that are potentially dangerous,
risky, and questionable. I wish someone had given Baker 30-50 more pages and
asked him to inject a little Laurie Halse Anderson into his novel.
Speaking of Laurie
Halse Anderson, I’m reading her latest book next while I wait for The Biggest Loser finale.
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