Hi, everybody. Welcome to the librarian is in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Gwen. And I'm Francois. And we are very excited today to welcome Angie Manfredi, who is the

head of youth services for the Los Alamos County Library System in New Mexico. Angie, thank you so

much for joining us. Hi. Thanks for having me. And I have to say that my last name is Manfredi.

Oh, Manfredi, I'm sorry.

It's okay. It happens a lot. I don't know if that would actually come up anywhere on the internet, but I should do say it. Yeah. Sometimes you can find people saying their own names, which is what I tried. It's true. We are here today to talk about lots of things. First of all, I just wanted to say one of the reasons that I was

really excited to have you on is because I love your blog, which I read religiously. You have

nice, long, thoughtful posts about lots of different things. And one that really captured my

attention was the one about Abigail the Whale, which is a book by David Kelly.

See, look, I'm already not pronouncing other people's names right.

Yeah, I'm not sure how to pronounce his name either, to be fair.

Yes, okay.

So, but anyway, you write a lot about fat positivity and because you work with children and

teens, you write about fat positivity in literature for them also.

So that was kind of where I really wanted to start today, was you talking a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think that it's, you know, I, I'm interested in it because, especially in picture books,

which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Abigail the whale. There's very few representations of fat bodies

for children in picture books. But then we find similarly the same thing in a lot of actual

middle grade and YA. So I think it's important to talk about the positive stuff, and I think

it's also important to hold the not positive stuff accountable because there's so little of it.

So on both those ends, that's kind of the spectrum that I'm drawn to because I am a fat person

myself.

And so I think often about what messages kids are getting and about their own bodies or about the bodies of adults all around them

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