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HOW TO BE POPULAR
by Meg Cabot
Reviewed by Amy Alessio
Hardcover
HarperTempest
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0060880120
ISBN-13: 9780060880125
304 pages

Author Biography | Review | Interview | Excerpt
MegCabot.com | More on Teenreads.com
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-- ABOUT THE BOOK --

Do you want to be popular?

Everyone wants to be popular --- or at least, Stephanie Landry does. Steph's been the least popular girl in her class since a certain cherry Super Big Gulp catastrophe five years earlier.

Does being popular matter?

It matters very much --- to Steph. That's why this year, she has a plan to get in with the It Crowd in no time flat. She's got a secret weapon: an old book called --- what else? --- HOW TO BE POPULAR.

What does it take to be popular?

All Steph has to do is follow the instructions in The Book, and soon she'll be partying with the It Crowd (including school quarterback Mark Finley) instead of sitting on The Hill Saturday nights, stargazing with her nerdy best pal Becca, and even nerdier Jason (now kind of hot, but still), whose passion for astronomy Steph once shared.

Who needs red dwarves when you're invited to the hottest parties in town?

But don't forget the most important thing about popularity!

It's easy to become popular. What isn't so easy? Staying that way.

-- AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY --

Meg Cabot is the author of the bestselling, critically acclaimed Princess Diaries books, which were made into the wildly popular Disney movies of the same name. Her other books for teens include the Mediator series, the 1-800-Where-R-You books, ALL-AMERICAN GIRL, READY OR NOT, TEEN IDOL, and AVALON HIGH, as well as NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT and VICTORIA AND THE ROGUE. She also writes books for adults, including THE BOY NEXT DOOR, BOY MEETS GIRL, EVERY BOY'S GOT ONE, and SIZE 12 IS NOT FAT. She is still waiting for her real parents, the king and queen, to restore her to her rightful throne. She lives in Key West and New York City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta.

-- INTERVIEW --

Meg Cabot is best known for such popular young adult series as The Princess Diaries, The Mediator and 1-800-Where-R-You. In this interview with Teenreads.com's Jennifer Krieger, Cabot discusses the biographical and autobiographical elements that helped shape her latest stand-alone novel, HOW TO BE POPULAR. She also talks about her own high school experiences, a moving encounter with a young reader, and details concerning future projects.

Teenreads.com: The "Rules to Popularity" that Stephanie "acquires" is wonderfully old-fashioned and mannered. With advice like "People are drawn to those who have the ability to make them feel excited whether about a car wash, a weenie roast, or a sock hop," it reads like an early "Miss Manners Guide for Young Ladies and Gentlemen." Yet there is something essentially familiar and timeless about the tips and tasks one must undertake to be popular. Do you think that, despite the onslaught of technical advancements and teens' extreme "computer-savvy," the rules for being popular are essentially the same now as they were 50 years ago?

Meg Cabot: Not only do I believe tips about how to achieve popularity in social settings like school are timeless, but they are actually very similar to the tips you see in how-to books for executives looking to advance in the workplace. The rules about being popular are the same for school as they are for the office! They're totally universal.

TRC: One of the most striking things about Stephanie is her uncanny ability to be hyper-aware, witty and articulate, but also insecure and unsure of herself. This makes her easy to relate to. Was Stephanie, as a character, meant to be easily identified with --- an "every girl" --- of sorts?

MC: Well, I pretty much just based her, as I do all my main characters, on myself when I was her age. I wasn't QUITE as unpopular as she is, but I definitely never got invited to a party in four years of high school, if that tells you anything.

TRC: Stephanie's family and friends, from her donating-happy grandfather to her raisin-wary friend Jason, are all humorously and vividly described. As a reader, I could really see them. How do you come up with your supporting characters? Do you start out with a cast of personalities that you want to put down on the page, or do they develop as the story itself does?

MC: I truly do base ALL my characters on people I know --- although I try to disguise them so the people they're based on won't recognize themselves and sue me. I do this by giving them characters traits that other people I know have. So no one character is truly based 100% on any one person, but a mix of a lot of people. I do think that's why they seem so realistic, though --- because all of their traits really do belong to someone in real life.

TRC: In The Princess Diaries series, you do a wonderful job depicting New York City. In HOW TO BE POPULAR, Stephanie's Podunk town of Bloomville, Indiana is described in laugh-out-loud descriptions and observations. What strikes me is how adept you are at describing two very different settings with equal vibrancy, capturing each place's odd quirks and characteristics. What role does setting play for you in your books? Do you make a concerted effort to really get into describing a place, or is it something that comes naturally to you?

MC: Thanks! I do think the setting of a story is important --- where we live does shape our lives, in many ways. I debate long and hard about where I'm going to set a novel, do research on it once I've decided, and try to set it in a place I've actually been (unless of course it's a made-up place). The more details you can add about a setting (so long as they enhance the story), the more realistic your story will seem to readers.

TRC: You grew up in Bloomington, Indiana and Stephanie is such a strikingly well-drawn and believable character that it's hard not to imagine that some of her and her story is based on your own experiences growing up. How much of Stephanie and her experiences is autobiographical?

MC: Well, like I said before --- almost all of it. My campaign to become popular wasn't quite as calculated or set on as wide a scale as Steph's --- I wanted only to become friendly with people within a certain clique in my school (the drama "freaks," as we were called by the jocks, who were the popular kids). But by devoting all my Saturdays to set building, and all my weeknights to rehearsals, I finally did manage to weasel my way into their group and make friends --- although ultimately I decided the theater was not for me.

TRC: Following that, what were your high school experiences like? Were you popular? Were the rules outlined in Stephanie's "Guide to Popularity" things you wish you had known/practiced growing up? Do you think knowing them would have made any difference?

MC: I did know all or most of the rules in Steph's guide to popularity, because my mom told them to me when I was growing up --- she was popular in high school, so it all came very naturally to her and she could never understand why I had so many problems with it. Ultimately, though, being popular for the sake of being popular wasn't ever one of my goals --- getting to be friends with people I admired was, and I achieved that just by being myself (with the aforementioned sacrifice of my Saturdays and weeknights).

TRC: We are saturated with images of teenage girls as "Queen Bees" or "Mean Girls." Yet even "A-listers" like Lauren Moffatt and her popular friends are not cruel or sadistic in the way teenage girls are so often depicted in our popular culture. What do you think the impact of all this negative press, compounded by the books and movies that perpetuate the image of them as conniving and mean-spirited, has on teenage girls? Do you go out of your way to avoid such portrayals? Do you think there is any merit to the now-popular conception of ultra-competitive and often cruel or manipulative young women running rampant in high schools across America?

MC: I don't actually think these portrayals are unrealistic. There were girls like that in my high school, and I hear from readers about girls like that in their middle and high schools. And I have to say --- as an adult --- there are women like that in my field (publishing and fiction-writing) as well. It seems unbelievable, but it's true. And with the age of the Internet, women and girls like this have gotten, if anything, even nastier and more manipulative than they were when I was growing up. However, I am a firm believer in karma, and I know whatever evil deeds these girls do will come back at them times three --- just as I have been rewarded by the universe for NOT being nasty to my peers.

TRC: You must get approached constantly by your readers, adults and young adults alike, and told how your books impacted, inspired and entertained them. Is there one interaction with a reader you can remember that had a real impact on you?

MC: I do get approached a lot and thanked for helping readers through difficult times, but there was one particularly odd one that I'll never forget --- a young Muslim girl in a headscarf who'd waited in a long line to get her books autographed. She approached my table crying hysterically --- so hard she couldn't talk. I asked her what was wrong but she didn't reply. She just gave me this huge hug and whispered "You don't know what you did for me, but I can't thank you enough," and ran away. I never found out who she was or what was up with the tears. But I'm glad I was able to help.

TRC: Could you see HOW TO BE POPULAR as a movie? If you could cast any young actress today as Stephanie in the film version, who would you choose?

MC: Ha! I don't play that game. If they do make a movie of my book, I don't want whoever ends up playing my characters reading this and then feeling like they weren't my first choice!

TRC: Do you see HOW TO BE POPULAR branching into a series? Where would you take Stephanie and her friends?

MC: I really don't see this book as a series. Generally when I think of a story that has series potential, I think of multiple plots all at one time. For Steph and the gang, it was always just this one book.

TRC: What advice would you offer to young adults who want to be writers? What writers inspired or still inspire you?

MC: Read a lot, then try to write the kind of books you like to read. 99% of writing a book is keeping your butt in the chair and finishing it. If you can do that, you can get it published. See the FAQ section of www.megcabot.com, or visit my online diary, for more tips.

TRC: What are you working on now, and what can we plan to see from you in the future?

MC: Right now I'm working on Princess Diaries 9! Princess Diaries 8, as well as MISSING YOU, the final installment of my 1-800-Where-R-You series, both come out in December 2006, along with the sequel to my first adult mystery, SIZE 12 IS NOT FAT. Go to my online book club, www.megcabotbookclub.com, or my new MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/meg_cabot, for more info!

-- REVIEW --

Based on a Big Gulp spillage incident five years earlier, it's common for people in Stephanie's small Indiana town to advise others not to "pull a Steph Landry." Well, Stephanie is tired of it --- the jokes, the bullying from popular girl Lauren Moffat and her clique, the being ignored. This school year is going to be different.

Best friends Becca and Jason can't understand why Stephanie is suddenly dressing like teens in Seventeen, volunteering to run a school talent auction, and sitting with the popular kids at lunch. They don't know that she found an old book on "How to Be Popular" and is secretly following its advice. She's smiling, pretending not to notice when people make mean comments and volunteering to show her school spirit.

Becca starts joining her for lunch at beautiful Darlene's table but only after lots of persuasion, though Jason keeps making fun of her and seems genuinely angry. This doesn't stop her from spying into his room with binoculars, as Jason recently got really hot.

Another hottie, Mark Finley, begins noticing Stephanie for the first time as she gets to work on the big auction. Soon he's talking to her and defending her. Everything she wanted seems to be falling into place.

However, Stephanie is still getting hate notes and email, her family's bookstore is being run out of business by a local discount store, Jason starts avoiding her, and the new popular crowd wants to hold their big rager party in her grandfather's new Observatory. He built it for his new bride, and the wedding ceremony is this weekend; it's like a wedding present.

Stephanie doesn't want to go back to being made fun of as "Steph Landry," but maybe the advice in that book wasn't so great after all. Although popular, she is no longer herself. She might be eating at a popular lunch table, but she feels like she's losing her two best friends.�When Mark Finley starts showing her a lot of attention, even while he has a girlfriend, Steph wonders if being "popular" is really worth it.

HOW TO BE POPULAR has the humor and great characters for which Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot is known. She's�conveying�to�readers the truth behind the cliche "The grass�is always�greener on the other side." Even�though it isn't good to worry about fitting in with any "popular" clique or set at any school, it is certain that this book will be very Popular for all the right reasons.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

-- EXCERPT --

Chapter One

T-minus two days and counting
saturday, august 26, 7 P.M.

I should have known from the way the woman kept looking at my name tag that she was going to ask.

"Steph Landry," she said as she pulled out her wallet. "Now, how do I know that name?"

"Gosh, ma'am," I said. "I don't know." Except that, even though I had never seen this woman before in my life, I had a pretty good idea how she might have heard of me.

"I know," the lady said, snapping her fingers, then pointing at me. "You're on the Bloomville High School women's soccer team!"

"No, ma'am," I said to her. "I'm not."

"You weren't on the court of the Greene County Fair Queen, were you?"

But you could tell, even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she knew she was wrong again. I don't have Indiana county fair queen hair -- i.e., my hair is short, not long; brown, not blonde; and curly, not straight. Nor do I have an Indiana county fair queen bod -- i.e., I'm kinda on the short side, and if I don't exercise regularly, my butt kind of . . . expands.

Obviously I do what I can with what God gave me, but I won't be landing on America's Next Top Model anytime soon, much less the court of any fair queen.

"No, ma'am," I said.

The thing is, I really didn't want to get into it with her. Who would?

But she wouldn't let it go.

"Goodness. I just know I know your name from somewhere," the woman said, handing me her credit card to pay for her purchases. "You sure I didn't read about you in the paper?"

"Pretty sure, ma'am," I said. God, that would be just what I need. For the whole thing to have shown up in the paper.

Fortunately, though, I haven't been in the paper since my birth announcement. Why would I? I'm not particularly talented, musically or otherwise.

And while I'm in mostly AP classes, that's not because I'm an honor student or anything. That's just because if you grow up in Greene County knowing that lemon Joy goes in your dishwasher and not your iced tea, you get put in AP classes.

It's actually sort of surprising how many people in Greene County make that mistake. With the lemon Joy, I mean. According to my friend Jason's dad, who is a doctor over at Bloomville Hospital.

"It's probably," I said to the woman as I ran her credit card through the scanner, "because my parents own this store."

Which I know doesn't sound like much. But Courthouse Square Books is the only independently owned bookstore in Bloomville. If you don't include Doc Sawyer's Adult Books and Sexual Aids, out by the overpass. Which I don't.

"No," the woman said, shaking her head. "That's not it, either."

I could understand her frustration. What's especially upsetting about it -- if you think about it (which I try not to, except when things like this happen) -- is that Lauren and I, up until the end of fifth grade, had been friends. Not close friends, maybe. It's hard to be close friends with the most popular girl in school, since she's got such a busy social calendar.

But certainly close enough that she'd been over to my house (okay, well, once. And she didn't exactly have the best time. I blame my father, who was baking a batch of homemade granola at the time. The smell of burnt oatmeal WAS kind of overpowering) and I'd been over to hers (just once . . . her mom had been away getting her nails done, but her dad had been home and had knocked on Lauren's door to say that the explosion noises I was making during our game of Navy Seal Barbie were a little too loud. Also that he'd never heard of Navy Seal Barbie, and wanted to know what was so wrong with playing Quiet Nurse Barbie).

"Well," I said to the customer, "maybe I just . . . you know. Have one of those names that sounds familiar."

Yeah. Wonder why. Lauren's the one who coined the term "Don't pull a Steph Landry." Out of revenge.

It's amazing how fast it caught on, too. Now if anyone in school does anything remotely crack-headed or dorky, people are all, "Don't pull a Steph!" or "That was so Steph!" or "Don't be such a Steph!"

And I'm the Steph they're talking about.

Nice.

"Maybe that's it," the woman said doubtfully. "Gosh, this is going to bug me all night. I just know it."

Her credit card was approved. I tore off the slip for her to sign and started bagging her purchases. Maybe I could tell her that the reason she might know me is because of my grandfather. Why not? He's currently one of the most talked about -- and richest -- men in southern Indiana, ever since he sold some farmland he owned along the proposed route of the new I-69 ("connecting Mexico to Canada via a highway 'corridor'" through Indiana, among other states) for the construction of a Super Sav-Mart, which opened last weekend.

Which means he's been in the local paper a lot, especially since he spent a chunk of his money building an observatory that he plans to donate to the city.

Because every small town in southern Indiana needs an observatory.

Not.

It also means my mother isn't speaking to him, because the Super Sav-Mart, with its reduced prices, is probably going to put all of the shops along the square, including Courthouse Square Books, out of business.

But I knew the customer would never fall for it. Grandpa's last name isn't even the same as mine. He was afflicted from birth with the unfortunate moniker of Emile Kazoulis . . . although he's done pretty well for himself, despite this handicap.

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