Plot
Maggie Bean is the average 7th grader, having a tough year. Her dad lost his job, and her mom is stressed about money. So Maggie focuses on keeping up her straight A average and eating chocolate—lots and lots of chocolate. But it all changes when Maggie gets a chance to try out for the synchronized swim team. Becoming a Water Wing has always been Maggie's dream. She and her friend Aimee work to complete their goal and Maggie might finally stop being a social outcast. Who would not want a cute silver bathing suit, an awesome circle of friends, and the boyfriend of her dreams? But it is all up to Maggie, and who she thinks she is. She also is forced to join the "Pound Patrollers", a club of other heavy people, where she meets Arnie, another chunky boy her age who turns out to be Peter (her dream boy's) cousin. She forms a friendship with him. At school, she also gets a little closer to Peter, though not boyfriend-girlfriend close. Her sister, Summer, Aimee, and of course Maggie herself, work to help find her dad a job. She also begins to lose weight and takes nearly 20 pounds off her original 186. She eats less, gets rid of her chocolate, and practices for the Water Wings tryouts, which she eventually nails. However, cocaptains Julia and Anabel keep her off the team, causing Maggie to become depressed. Later, her gym teacher realizes this and offers Maggie a chance to join the Water Wings OR the regular swim team. She chooses the latter. Her dad also makes progress towards getting a job through Maggie's help.
Read more about this topic: The Melting Of Maggie Bean
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)