Diet Book for Kids: Worst Thing Ever?

Hey, kids! Not only are your parents derelicts for serving you awful food, but you're too fat and no one will like you if you don't lose weight!

Whoo boy. Where to begin? An American author is releasing a children's book that preaches the wonders of dieting (about 35 years too late), brewing all sorts of controversy over whether it's wise to reinforce body image stereotypes for kids as young as six. (The short answer? No, probably not.) Paul Kramer's Maggie Goes on a Diet, set to be released this October, is about, well, a chubbyish girl going on a diet because kids made fun of her at school. In the end, she loses weight and becomes the school's star soccer player (because only skinny kids can be cool, we guess?). Now, putting questions about the effectiveness of dieting aside, and overlooking that a far bigger concern is Maggie's demon-spawn red hair, it seems as if Mr. Kramer is forgetting that no kid in North America decides what he or she eats, so the whole notion of a child deciding to go on a diet is dead on arrival. That, and there's this thing called baby fat, some kids are just naturally more hefty than others, and there are some really serious body image problems that arise when you tell kids that certain body types are more desirable than others. Finally, trust us: Chubby kids have it hard enough without some smug author from Hawaii telling them they're not up to snuff. Let's just hope Mr. Kramer has a book called Danny Goes to the Depression Doctor lined up as well.