Book Review: FAT CAT by Robin Brande

FAT CAT
by Robin Brande
Non-series

Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN-10: 0-375-84449-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-375-84449-2
Publication Date: October, 2009
List Price: $21.00

Review: When Catherine Locke (a.k.a. Cat) dreams up a science project for the science fair, her life begins to change. She faces popularity issues, hunger pangs, old friends, competition and life as a prehistoric woman. She cannot use technology like phones and ipods. She cannot eat food prehistoric people did not eat, except during emergencies. Will Cat be able to accomplish this extreme project? Find out the answers to these questions in the book Fat Cat by Robin Brande.

In the book Fat Cat, The main character Cat, has a problem. When Cat is assigned to do a project on Homo erectus, (early hominins from 1.8 million years ago) she decides to make the subject of the project herself. Her project is to see what would happen if she took away everything Homo erectus don’t have, because she thinks it could make her skinnier. Cat thinks she’s fat. This incredible task includes food Homo erectus didn’t have, plus, phones, ipods, and TV! Her friends, (Amanda, Cat’s best friend) and Jordan (Amanda’s boyfriend) are all there to support her. Oh, and don’t forget Cat’s arch enemy Matt. He’s her enemy because she is convinced that he took first place from her in a previous science fair and he said something pretty nasty about her behind her back. When she starts going from fat to normal and not cool to popular, her life begins to unfold page by page.

Fat Cat is a pretty good book. In my opinion, this book should be recommended for older middle school students since they will most likely enjoy the book. If I were an eighth grader when I read Fat Cat I would probably have said that the book was interesting because it mixed daily life and science together. From this book I learned that you can’t give up something important just because you think it’s too hard and you should look at things from a positive view. The book shows what happens when you do certain things such as getting off junk food when you have practically been living on it the whole summer. It also shows that maybe trying to cook with only the food that the Homo erectus had is trickier than Cat thinks. In the book it says “Even if my cave woman had grain, it’s a separate thing to say she figured out how to mill it into flour.” I chose this sentence because it shows the problems of trying to cook with only the food that Homo erectus had. I would probably give these book 4 stars. This book was exciting funny and made me laugh. The author did an excellent job with Fat Cat. I hope everyone else will enjoy Fat Cat like I did.

Review written by Sarah (6th grade student).

We would like to thank Random House for providing a copy of FAT CAT for this review.

Have you read FAT CAT? How would you rate it?