Tyler Page's mostly lighthearted graphic memoir sensitively and approachably explores an important but seldom covered topic in books for middle schoolers: body image in boys. Page also addresses a subject that, while more common, is not always approached with the nuance it deserves: bullying.
Seventh grader Tyler is an appealing protagonist: smiley, game, and as he approaches adolescence, increasingly self-reflective. He notices how the bodies of other boys are changing, with new "sculpted muscles" and "bulging veins," and wonders where his softer, rounder shape fits in. Teasing at school takes a more mean-spirited tone, with Tyler by turns a recipient, a bystander, and even a participant, although all of it makes him uncomfortable. When classmates make fun of a new girl's seemingly normal ears, for example, Tyler is perplexed. "But everyone continued to make fun of her.... So eventually, I just went along with it." When his own friends take teasing too far during a water gun game, though, Tyler has had enough and begins distancing himself from the negativity.
Page (Button Pusher) balances his character's sweet innocence with his confusing new impulses toward cruelty, and his feelings of being a misfit with his generally positive sense of self. Page's demonstrative mixed-media art pops with 1980s neon and lively action, and the narration and dialogue seem to be pulled whole cloth out of a 12-year-old boy's mind, in all its awkward, goofy charm. With its nonjudgmental and empathic approach, Extra Large might even get a certain population of lapsed bookworms reading again. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor