Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek (A Memoir)

By Maya Van Wagenen

New York Times BestsellerPopular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek is a touchingly honest, candidly hysterical memoir from breakout teen author Maya Van Wagenen.&#39;School is the armpit of life . . . and my school is no exception&#39;Stuck at the bottom of the social ladder at &#39;pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren&#39;t paid to be here,&#39; Maya Van Wagenen decided to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell. Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help Maya on her quest to be popular? The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise-meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humour and grace, Maya&#39;s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.&#39;The real deal. . . A teenage John Green for the next generation. Stunning.&#39;  Margaret Stohl, bestselling co-author of the bestselling Beautiful Creatures series&#39;Popular is wonderful. It is charming, touching, entertaining - and brought back a lot of memories about my own high school anxieties. I will be saving my copy to give to my daughter when she is a little older&#39; Jo Elvin, Glamour&#39;I was inspired by [Maya&#39;s] journey and made a point of saving a copy of &#39;Popular&#39; for my sister, who starts middle school this fall. Maybe if I had read it when I was her age, it could have saved me from a world of hurt, or at least put that world in perspective.&#39; Maude Apatow, New York Times Book Review&#39;Made me smile, giggle and question what my idea of popularity really is . .  A must read this summer&#39; Guardian Books Blog&#39;Honest, funny, and thought-provoking.&#39; Gretchen Rubin, #1 bestselling author of The Happiness Project&#39;Her year-long experiment in popularity is timeless; the intelligent and humane way she gets to the heart of the matter is uniquely her. Funny, determined, and wry, Van Wagenan has written a wise, heartfelt guide for other kids eager to keep up.&#39; Rachel Hartman, NYT bestselling author of Seraphina&#39;A talented writer, she&#39;s funny, thoughtful and self-effacing . . . Teens will readily identify with her&#39; KirkusAbout the author:Maya Van Wagenen is fifteen years old.  When she was eleven, her family moved to Brownsville, Texas, the setting of Popular. When not hunched over a desktop writing, Maya enjoys reading, British Television, and chocolate.  She now lives with her parents and two siblings in a rural Georgia.  She is a sophomore in high school but still shares a room with her sixth grade brother.  Remarkably they have not yet killed each other.

New York Times BestsellerPopular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek is a touchingly honest, candidly hysterical memoir from breakout teen author Maya Van Wagenen.'School is the armpit of life . . . and my school is no exception'Stuck at the bottom of the social ladder at 'pretty

By Maya Van Wagenen

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