The Littlest Bigfoot by Jennifer Weiner

Title: The Littlest Bigfoot

Author: Jennifer Weiner

Read by:  Emma Galvin, Keith Nobbs, & Jen Ponton

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 6 hours and 41 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank-you!

My eight-year old daughter, Penelope, and I have been enjoying listening to The Littlest Bigfoot together whenever we are in the car with just the two of us.  We started this audiobook on a trip to Chicago in March and finished it on a trip to Girl Scout camp at the beginning of July. The Littlest Bigfoot is a middle grade reader book that is both contemporary and fantasy.  It is a great novel about fitting in and bullying.

Alice Mayfair is a twelve year old girl that has always felt different and outside of her family.  Her mother is a beautiful, skinny, rich woman in New York City and doesn’t know what to do with Alice who is large and doesn’t like to follow the rules. Alice’s parents send her to a string of boarding schools and she is always alone and picked on.  Alice is sent to a new hippy type school, “The Experimental Center of Love and Learning” where she tries hard to fit in with the popular crowd, until one day, she finds herself picked on and on the outside again.  That is until she rescues a drowning girl named Millie from the lake. 

Millie also feels left out in her world.  She belongs to a tribe of Yare (Bigfoot), but she is small in stature and has rare silver fur.  Her parents are very protective.  Millie longs to join the “no fur” world and become a singer.  When she meets Alice, she finally starts to feel like she may belong.

Jeremy is an outcast who lives in a nearby town.  His obsession is finding a Bigfoot.  When he starts to uncover information that there could be a Bigfoot at the strange experimental school outside of town, he starts a process of fear that threatens to overwhelm the school and expose the Yare tribe.  Will Jeremy succeed?

Penelope and I both really enjoyed this tale.  Penelope in particular really liked the theme of accepting everyone no matter what they look like.  She’s started to see bullying happen in ways at childcare and school and this was a great book to discuss with her.  She was very struck as well on how Alice’s parents did not treat her well and it made her very sad.

The novel was narrated by the three main characters.  The audiobook had three different narrators to match each point of view which Penelope and I both enjoyed.  Penelope’s only complaint about the audiobook was that she wished when Jeremy talked in Alice’s chapter that it would have been in his voice.

Overall, The Littlest Bigfoot was an enjoyable audiobook for both child and adult with a unique story and good moral about bullying.  The surprise at the end has us ready to start the second book!