“I hate my father.”

From Paula Danziger’s The Cat Ate My Gymsuit.

Marcy is an overweight, awkward girl that spends her time drifting through life, trying to remain invisible both at school and at home where her verbally abusive father torments her daily. Things never go in Marcy’s favor and she has become accustomed to that fact; however, when Marcy meets her new English teacher, Ms. Finney, things quickly begin to change for the girl. While all the other teachers just toss out the information to disinterested students with strict punishments for disorderly behavior, the younger Ms. Finney continually tries to reach and engage her students, instantly sparking respect in Marcy. Ms. Finney also stands out from the rest of the school faculty because of her differing political and social views, and she is soon fired by the school’s principal for those very present ideologies. Not wanting to unjustly lose the only teacher that ever cared about the students, Marcy realizes that she’ll have to find a way to stand up–and get the rest of the students to join her–against the wrongful firing of Ms. Finney. While Marcy’s initial idea doesn’t seem like it will be full of difficulties, Marcy soon finds herself forced to push herself on every level to overcome the challenges of her mission.

This book meets a need of literature for young adult readers that offers characters that are neglected by the world because of physical appearance. However, Danziger’s treatment of several secondary characters provide the most issues for the modern readers. Like many books, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit has both positive and negative elements that will divide readers, but those elements do not remove the story’s impact.