(Review) The Popularity Papers

AUTHOR: Amy Ignatow
PUB DATE: 4/1/2010
PAGES: 208
PUBLISHER: Amulet Books
SOURCE: Borrowed library book

ABOUT THE BOOK
Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang are best friends with one goal: to crack the code of popularity. Lydia’s the bold one: aspiring theater star, stick-fighting enthusiast, human guinea pig. Julie’s the shy one: observer and artist, accidental field hockey star, faithful recorder. In this notebook they write down their observations and carry out experiments to try to determine what makes the popular girls tick. But somehow, when Lydia and Julie try to imitate the popular girls, their efforts don’t translate into instant popularity. Lydia ends up with a bald spot, their parents won’t stop yelling, and Julie finds herself the number-one crush of Roland Asbjørnsen. Worse, they seem to be drifting farther and farther from their goal—and each other.

Amy Ignatow’s hilarious debut novel introduces the intrepid fifth-graders Julie and Lydia, whose quest to understand popularity may not succeed in the ways they want, but will succeed in keeping readers in stitches.

MY THOUGHTS
I have never heard of this book before so I had picked it up to read while Michael was at story time one Friday. (I somehow left my book at home) I flipped through this book and figured it would be a pretty quick and easy read while he was listening to the story and doing the craft (story time is an hour at our library).

I love the concept of the book, flipping through it you can see its done as a journal/ book that is home made.

As I was reading this it brought back memories of when I was in grade 5 and doing almost a similar thing with my BFF’s (best friends forever) at the time, ours wasn’t about trying to find a way to be popular, ours was based on a tv show called Square Pegs (does anyone remember that show?). I wish that I had that book now but sadly I don’t.

Back to my thoughts! Lydia and Julie are both BFF’s and in grade five. The girls are preparing to enter junior high and they are making it their mission to become popular by the time they enter junior high. The girls decide that they will have to observe like scientist to gather there data. They are going to watch the people who are already popular and apply it themselves. (ie clothes, hair etc). They are hoping to crack the code of becoming popular.

Lydia and Julie are documenting it all in a note book. As you can see its almost journal like. Inside this note book is drawings, had written notes, list of goals, notes passed on to each other, etc.

Some of the goals the girls fail at such as when Lydia decides to bleach a strip of hair to look like one of the popular girls but as an adult we know what bleach can do and putting it in your hair is NOT a good idea (the bleach used to dye your hair is different then household bleach) and Lydia ends up loosing some of her hair because of this.

As the project progresses the girls find acceptance in the higher ups but quickly realize that its not what they thought it would be and learn that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

I thought this was a really cute book and I would recommend this to any girl who is in grade five or entering grade five. I think there is a great lesson to this book and one that alot of girls might not know.