An adorable little satire with two message that are just as relevant now as they were almost a hundred years ago. Overall, a nice, funny little book about skinny people and fat people destroying each other's countries. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The Fattypuffs live lives of leisure and love eating and relaxing where the Thinifers love exercise and eating little.

It was a wonderfully droll account of war between two nations over the silliest and most nonsensical of philosophies and I was terribly impressed by the moral admonishment it contained about the eternal senselessness of human warfare. In a body concious age where war is still prevalent it has an excellent message and can be enjoyed on numerous levels by readers of many different ages.As a 'Thinnifer' child I empathised totally with the 'Fattypuffs' and loved their comfortable laid back lifestyle and the fact that they got to eat six square meals a day with light snacks in between and didn't give a damn about their weight.

Seeing the images above brings the memories flooding back and reminds me that there must have been occasions you risked the sticky fingers and let us have a read. Written in 1930 the two nations are apparently based on France and Germany and are no less antagonistic, but are also shown to be complimentary, even symbiotic. You can use this book to discuss body image with your daughter/young girls in a very non-confrontational way.When my elderly friend commented on some neighbours of ours, many years ago, as ‘fattypuffs and thinifers, I thought he’d just made it up. Was trying (and failing) to come up with the title recently, but just now a Goodreads friend has happened to "like" a review of what must certainly be the correct book. And it took a war as well as a lot of argument before the boys could teach them to agree about anything.

I bought this book for nostalgia purposes as I enjoyed it so much in junior school back in the 1970s but had it taken back off me at the end of summer term by teacher before I had chance to finish it. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty but socially realistic account of that experience. Came across this and had that shock of recognition - a childhood read and the illustrations brought everything back. Consequently, the Thinifer president proclaims that the two peoples form a new nation, the United States of the Underground.He worked in his father's textile factory as a young man and when World War One broke out he was employed as an interpreter, then as a liaison officer to the British Army. The Thinifers are hectic, eat to live types, who manufacture thin things like wire and spaghetti, while their rivals the Fattypuffs are expansive and have an economy based around the production of rounded and full figured objects like sausages and tyres. Great-aunt Ruth had never enjoyed children of her own but was really expert in seeking out the very newest and best books to give her many young relatives for birthdays and Christmas.