A review by sharonfalduto
How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot

I bought this book at Borders because Meg Cabot is coming to talk at the college where I work, on MY birthday, and I wanted to have something for her to sign since I usually check stuff out from the library. This was a young adult book, geared more towards teens than pre-teens. What I like about Meg Cabot is that she really seems to "get" this generation--for instance, in one passage in the book, the main character noted that if she were in a movie, she would print out the mean email she received and take it to her parents who would call the principal and the school would have an assembly "led by a pretty teacher that the author based on herself" and everything would be hunky dory, but since this isn't a movie, that isn't going to happen.

In this book our character, Steph, finds an old fasioned book on popularity and decides to use its tips to dig her way out of the unpopular crowd. Each chapter starts wtih a passage from the popularity book which then segues into the plot. It's a nice device.