HOW TO BE POPULAR
by Meg Cabot
Armed with a plan, Steph Landry starts junior year determined to shake her place as the butt of her town’s saying, “Don’t pull a Steph Landry.” The saying, coined by her stereotypically popular classmate, Lauren, is the product of a sixth-grade incident when Steph dropped her Super Big Gulp on Lauren’s white designer skirt. Tired of suffering for her spill, Steph puts faith in How to Be Popular, a book specializing in reputation resuscitation. Snippets from this sometimes comically outdated text, introduce and loosely shape Cabot’s chapters, but don’t dominate letting Steph’s plan play out naturally as she rockets to popularity and tries to figure out how to reconcile her new status with Jason, her childhood best friend. Steph’s relationships with male characters, especially Jason and her grandfather, consistently ring true and develop Steph into a refreshingly believable teen. Despite featuring upperclassmen, Steph’s aboveboard actions and mostly pure thoughts make this a fun and light text suitable for a younger audience wanting to read about older teens. (Fiction. 10-14)