How to Be Popular

by Meg Cabot Narrated by Kate Reinders

Overview

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 a lot-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.

All Steph has to do is follow the instructions in The Book, and soon she'll be partying with the popular kids (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).

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

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

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Steph Landry is tired of being unpopular ("If anyone in school does anything remotely crack-headed or dorky, people are all, `Don't pull a Steph!' "). After she discovers an old guide to popularity, she resolves to improve her status. She buys a new wardrobe, organizes a school fundraiser and smiles a lot. The plot is entertaining, if predictable: Steph quickly rises to the top, even forming a friendship with her cute crush. But along the way she strains her relationship with her best friend and neighbor, Jason-and slowly sees that life at the pinnacle is not all it seems. Readers may have trouble believing that the heroine's sixth-grade faux pas would warrant the long-term wrath of the school's queen bee (Steph accidentally spilled her Big Red Super Big Gulp on Lauren's designer skirt in front of the whole cafeteria). But the characters and dialogue come across as genuine and funny. Readers will likely find the antiquated advice from the popularity book hilarious ("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!"). Steph realizes there is some truth to it, though, even if what the book really helped her do was figure out how she feels about Jason. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up
Meg Cabot's legions of fans will thoroughly enjoy her latest book (HarperTeen, 2006) focusing on the ever-important teen topic of popularity. The story centers on first-person narrator Steph Landry, so unpopular in her small Indiana town that a minor social faux pas in sixth grade has dogged her footsteps all the way to this first week of her junior year of high school. But now Steph has a secret weapon, a book on popularity she found and has used as a blueprint to design her way into the "It Crowd." At first, the reading of passages from "The Book" can be confusing by breaking into the story line, but soon listeners will realize that the excerpts focus on the coming plot events. In the last few chapters of the novel, "The Book" is replaced by intriguing quotes from famous people decrying popularity as a measure of anything. This mirrors Steph's growing awareness that popularity is really the same as having genuine friendships and the respect of others. Kate Reinders reads the sixteen-year-old point of view with a perfect combination of inflection and tone. A must for Cabot fans.
—Jane P. FennCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

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)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169150278
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/15/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

How to Be Popular (AER)

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 thewhole 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.

How to Be Popular (AER). Copyright © by Meg Cabot. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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