Healthy: Anna Wood before her anorexia and then 'ravaged' by the illness
The work, called Maggie Goes on a Diet, is written in verse and aimed at those as young as six.
Last night it was condemned by parents and experts for sending a dangerous message to vulnerable youngsters and encouraging eating disorders.
Although it won't be published until October, Amazon is taking orders for the 44-page book written by U.S. author and father Paul M. Kramer.
A summary on the website says the plot features 'a 14-year-old girl who goes on a diet and is transformed from being extremely overweight and insecure to a normal-sized girl who becomes the school soccer star'.
It continues: 'Through time, exercise and hard work, Maggie becomes more and more confident and develops a positive self-image.'
The picture on the cover shows the podgy teenage girl holding a dress which is clearly too small for her and looking in the mirror at her reflection, represented by a slimmer version of herself. Christine Gibson, whose 16-year-old daughter Anna Wood died last year after anorexia 'ravaged' her body, criticised the book's message.
Controversial: Maggie Goes On A Diet, which will go on sale in October, tells the story of a 14-year-old who becomes a school football star after losing weight
'There is a huge percentage of kids who will read it and not take anything from it, but some will see it as the answer to a lot of things.'
Her daughter went on a post-Christmas diet to shed a few pounds but became gripped by the eating disorder and eventually died of a heart attack. Mrs Gibson's concerns were echoed by Paul Sacher, a paediatric dietitian and co-founder of Mend, an organisation that provides free, healthy lifestyle programmes for families. He said the book was 'shocking.'
'The suggestion that a young child should aspire to look thin rather than be healthier or have more energy is very concerning,' he said.
'While it's important that children maintain a healthy weight for their age and height, the idea that a child should go on a diet and lose weight is not helpful and could potentially be damaging.'
Joanna Ikeda, a nutritionist at the University of California, said: 'Body dissatisfaction is a major risk for eating disorders in children all the way up through adulthood.'
'Six and seven-year-olds already believe that their size tells the world what sort of person they are, and that big equals fat equals unpopular'She said role models such as Maggie could perpetuate the idea that 'if you don't look like Cinderella, you're a failure', adding: 'I wouldn't want a child to read this. They might, in fact, try to do this and fail. What is that going to do to their self-esteem?'
Mr Kramer, who is based in Hawaii, is publishing the book himself. It is a follow-up to his other children's titles including Bullies Beware and the soon-to-be published Do Not Dread Wetting the Bed and Divorce Stinks!
The books are meant to be read by parents alongside their children. Mr Kramer claims the diet book is merely tackling the 'issues that kids face today'.
But internet forums are already busy with criticism, with some parents threatening to boycott online retailers who sell it. One woman wrote: 'This book is an abomination. It takes so little to trigger eating disorders in children and teenagers and this could be such a huge trigger. If you read this to your kid it is tantamount to abuse.'
Overweight children, in particular as young as six, come from homes that have pantries full of artificially flavored junk, and live day to day on fast food and soft drink diets. There's no other explanation. Even the old adage, s/he's got a glandular problem truthfully affects a miniscule percentage of the population, with the exception of the glandular problem produced by horrible diet to begin with.
I see kids out in public that are this age (6) and are easily 40 pounds or more overweight. They're waddling around with huge bellies, and their overweight parents spend a majority of the families grocery and eating budget keeping it that way.
You know there are at least a hundred well written books out there for parents to do the right thing diet-wise, for themselves and their family. But since those books haven't been turned into a reality show where someone is singing, dancing or trying to get laid, the information necessary for the health of the children just isn't that important.
A great deal of other health problems can be correlated with poor diets, including mental issues and other childhood diseases. Just because a candy bar dinner didn't cause cancer in one sitting, doesn't mean the accumulation of fake processed junk isn't wreaking havoc on what would otherwise be a healthy, functioning body. Even those children that don't have the weight problem but still subsist on the junk are only going to suffer in the short, medium and long terms.
I'm not saying that there should never be a fast food outing, or never a can of pop or a treat. But those things are rare treats rather than the status quo.
While the content and the age group this book is about may be questionable, it seems to be necessary considering the incompetence of the guardians. Believe it or not, preparing food from single, natural and organic ingredients is actually a parental responsibility. The outright neglect of that costs the child, the family and the society a greater toll than we are realizing...