Fatso Jean, the Ice Cream Queen

Jean, an overweight, incessantly self-deprecating nine-year-old, consoles her unhappy self by eating large quantities of ice cream. The taunts of the cool neighborhood kids (whom she calls the Mean Team) finally get to her, and Jean reduces her ice-cream consumption in order to lose weight--with some success, but with no luck toward becoming one of the gang. Still obsessed with her favorite food, she decides to go into the ice cream-making business. Without her parents' knowledge, Jean sells her product out of a wagon stenciled with the words: ``Fatso Jean, the Ice Cream Queen,'' inexplicably using the epithet the Mean Team torments her with. In a final, rather unbelievable stroke of bad luck, Jean is inadvertently knocked down by the Mean Team on bikes, and the poor girl ends up in the hospital with a broken arm. After this, things begin to look up for Jean, and her tedious story ends on a happy note. Ages 7-11. (Sept.)