A one of a kind book. It talks about all the real uglies in the world of teens in such a fun way. This is the one book that had me laughing my ass on the floor. And it's supposed to be way funnier, too, in its original language - French - for all the puns that were lost in translation.
Beauvais takes us on a bicycle ride through the French countryside with Mireille and her gang of bullied girls from school dubbed as Piglettes because, well, they're fat. And fat is ugly. But Mireille isn't ashamed of it. In fact, she's having fun making the national headlines with it.
This novel will tickle you with its subtle, humorous punches on how we shouldn't be and shouldn't let anyone embarrass us by being ourselves. Embrace your freaky, it's not a requirement to be pretty.
Favourite Lines from:
Piglettes
by Clementine Beauvais
And yet… you do end up being pretty good at taking care of people once you find a good reason for it.
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“I don’t understand why you insist on calling yourselves the Three Little Piglettes,” Mum groans. “It’s a horrible name.”
“We’ll make it beautiful, you’ll see. Or better, we’ll make it powerful.”
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Auntie Mireille’s Life Tips: take whatever insults they throw at you and knit them into a lovely big hat.
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“Breathe. Stitches happen when your muscles are deprived of oxygen and produce too much lactic acid. Just breathe and it’ll be fine.”
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“Does it always hurt like that?”
“Grammar? Yes, it’s very painful.”
“No, periods.”
“Periods? Always
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In a black-and-white world, blood is black.
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She writes that what’s unique in human nature is that we find joy in surprise, in newness, in the unexpected. Human beings make plans and draw maps, sure—but that’s not what makes us human. If anything, that’s what makes us animals. Animals plan things too. Bees sculpt honeycombs, cats calculate the trajectory of their paws towards the butterfly they want to catch (except Fluffles, who’s a lame butterfly hunter). But human beings are only properly human because they draw novelty and the unexpected from
this well-ordered world. Art, emotion and life are what happen when plans, programmes and predictions fail.
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There’s such a gap between the words we read on the Internet and those we hear from people we meet!
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And it’s weird, this popularity. I’m not used to being smiled at like this. I’m not used to being asked how I am. Maybe this is what it feels like to be beautiful—I’ve always noticed that beautiful people attract all the smiles and all the Hey, you all rights. We don’t like to see beautiful people not being all right. Ugly people, though—of course they’re not all right, they’re ugly.
But now, at last, it’s like we’ve earned the right to be asked if we’re all right—and to be smiled at.
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“I don’t know. Maybe ugliness makes you wiser.
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Easy to be seduced by a face, even better to be seduced by a mind
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“Ugliness makes you wiser” #3littlepiglettes-yes! Let’s free
ourselves from the cult of beauty!
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I don’t think I’d like to go to a prestigious Parisian high school and then be a Political Science student at an elite university. I wouldn’t have any time to stroke Fluffles and write rubbish poems; plus I’d always have to be either working or going out with the children of other important people. No, I’m better off where I am now.
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“I’d like to, but I can’t,” I say sadly. “I want the Nobel Prize in Literature, and they don’t give it to funny writers.”
“What do you want the Nobel for?”
“So I can fail to thank my biological father in my acceptance speech.”
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“But if my hair doesn’t fall over my face any more, everyone’ll see me blush all the time.”
“Is that why you keep it that way?”
“Partly. And also because, well, I’m butt-ugly.”
“Oh, give it a rest. Firstly, some butts are very beautiful, and secondly…
So deep are your two eyes, my dear,
That as I drank their water clear
I spotted in one curvy globe
A Mireille shiny Suns disrobe.”
“The brightest rays are those that pierce
Through the thick cloudedness of tears;
The eye is only at its bluest
When sadness paints the pupil blackest.”
“What’s that about?”
“It’s, like, your eyes are all the prettier when they’re crying.”
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“It’s a funny thing, life. I wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting at all to see this part of my existence re-emerge, today, at this tiresome social gathering. But I guess Patricia was always where I expected her least. It’s a pleasant thing, sometimes, to be surprised.”
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I gave them my biggest smile and kept my own emotions tucked away inside, which is their rightful place.
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“It was right here that the horses would gather when the cavemen chased them, all that time ago. They had to jump, because they were under so much pressure.”
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