Ellen Handler Spitz, Honors College, in The New Republic

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, discussed the young adult novel Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, byKatherine Marsh, in her latest column in the New Republic. The historical novel follows the story of Jepp, a court dwarf in the Spanish-ruled Netherlands of the late sixteenth century. Spitz compares Jepp’s story – in whichhis destiny is defined by his body and dictated by the whims of others – to the plight of the story’s adolescent readers. “Adolescents are newly encased—like Jepp—in bodies that seem too small (or too large) but never a match for what is inside them, which nobody else …