NONFICTION
Free For All: Fixing School Food in America by Janet Poppendieck, $27.50
School lunches don’t exactly have a great reputation. The daily smorgasbord of pizza, Tater Tots, soda and other fattening fare has come under fire as obesity continues to be a national health crisis.
In “Free for All,” sociology professor Janet Poppendieck explains how nutrition-deficient meals came to dominate America’s school cafeterias and outlines a slew of problems in the national school lunch and breakfast programs.
Poppendieck identifies shortcomings at virtually every layer of the system, from inefficient government-mandated paperwork to school kitchens ill-equipped to do anything beyond defrost frozen meals. Outside the bureaucracy, there are other obstacles to healthy eating: Kids gravitate toward seductive but unhealthy items, such as cookies or chips, even when more nutritious items are available.
Poppendieck is particularly critical of the programs’ pricing system, which allows some students to get free or reduced-price meals based on their parents’ low incomes, but singles them out in the process.
“The biggest problem is the stigma that comes from being different,” she writes, “from being marked as poor, from being unable to pay in a culture that places excessive value on being able to pay and a school food subculture that increasingly views children as ‘customers.’ “
To that end, she argues convincingly that lunches should be free for all students, a measure that would remove shame from the equation for those who need the program while cutting costs associated with determining who qualifies for free or reduced- price meals.
By illuminating how Congress, big agriculture, local school boards and even parents affect what shows up in the cafeteria, this well-researched book makes a strong case for retooling school lunch menus nationwide.
FICTION
The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen, $15
Lindsey Rose is no stranger to competition. The protagonist of “The Opposite of Me,” a first novel by journalist Sarah Pekkanen, is a 29-year-old workaholic vying to be the youngest vice president ever at her New York advertising firm.
When her nemesis snatches a promotion from Lindsey’s overbitten fingernails, Lindsey spins wildly out of character and gets caught hooking up with another employee in the office conference room. She’s promptly fired and moves back in with Mom and Dad, where her life’s real competition is waiting: her gorgeous fraternal twin sister.
From strangers’ insensitive comments to high school bullies’ cruelty, Lindsey learned early to flex her brain as a foil to her sister’s beauty.
“Alex was the star, and I wasn’t even in her orbit,” Lindsey tells us. So when the twins’ orbits collide as adults, it’s high school all over again — with Alex’s homecoming crowns and football player boyfriends replaced by Washingtonian magazine cover shots and a dashing fiance.
But then each sister’s life plan changes drastically. Lindsey decides not to go back to advertising after a chance meeting with an entrepreneur whose matchmaking business proves much more appealing. And Alex suddenly falls for Lindsey’s friend from high school, just as Lindsey is also falling for him — a decade too late.
The crisis that finally curbs their sibling rivalry and encourages a sisterly bond feels a bit contrived, as does some of the soap-opera narration. “My jealousy had kept us apart,” Lindsey says at one point. “What if I never got a chance to know my sister?”
But such sentimentality is counterbalanced by sharp-tongued zingers and Pekkanen’s spot-on portrayal of the existential dilemmas of young adulthood. How do we know which path is right and whom to take along for the ride? And do we really want the goal we’ve been working so hard to attain?
