04 Sep 2011 04:29:03
For seconds, like-wildfire circulation of a blurb describing how the bullied girl is transformed through time, exercise and hard work into a popular, confident and average size soccer star. And cover art showing her wistfully holding up a Cinderella dress as she stares at her imagined, much slimmer self in a full-length mirror.
And an inside page, the only one most people have seen, that shows her hunched over the fridge during a two-fisted eating binge.
Thirds? Real teenagers have long moved on from rhyming picture books and the reading level for Hawaii dad Paul Kramer's amateurish, self-published effort is recommended on Amazon for kids ages 4 to 8.
The online mess for Kramer began recently with outraged commenters on Amazon, where pre-orders have not propelled Maggie anywhere near the top of the rankings. There is now a "savemaggie" hashtag on Twitter, a "Say No to Maggie Goes on a Diet" Facebook page, calls for a boycott and demands that Amazon and Barnes & Noble pull the book.
Kramer will not disclose how many orders he has for Maggie, which will not be in circulation until October. While most of the attention has been negative, he said, there are supporters, like this one who responded to a book basher on Twitter: "She's 14, not 6. Are you seriously suggesting that, with the obesity problem in this country, that a book teaching children to exercise and eat right, is somehow IMMORAL? I bet your fat."
Kramer, who went on "Good Morning America" and CNN to defend the book, already has regrets, although using the word "diet" is not one of them. Diet, he said, is not a dirty word as many of his angry critics have declared. Even for a book clearly most appropriate for little kids? He insists he didn't have 4-year-olds in mind, thinking more along the lines of 8 and up.
"The main message was that Maggie went on a diet predominantly because she loves sports and wanted to be able to run faster, bend more easily and be better able to play sports more effectively," Kramer told The Associated Press by phone from Maui, where he lives with his wife and soccer-loving, 16-year-old son.
Kramer, who struggled with obesity as a child and a young adult and still works to keep the pounds off, wishes Maggie's fantasy self in the mirror had not been quite so thin on the book's cover. He also wishes her transformation through weight loss had not been quite so much: 51 pounds in a little more than eight months.
"Now that I see the controversy I would say that I would have had her lose about 30 pounds and still have a little way to go," said Kramer, who is neither a physician nor a nutrition expert.
He said he is just a guy who wants to inspire overweight kids to be healthy.
"I regret that people associated the word 'diet' as me trying to push dieting on 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds. I'm not," Kramer said. "To me, diet means a change of habits, eating nutritiously, losing unhealthy weight."
