How Not to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler
Grades 7+	352 pages	Delacorte	January 2008	Hardcover

Sugar Magnolia (“Maggie”) Dempsey is just about to start her senior year of high school after moving to Austin, Texas, from Oregon. She’s no stranger to moving around a lot, but this time she’s left behind a bevy of friends and her boyfriend, Travis. Maggie moves so much because her parents are hippies who tend to go wherever the wind takes them. When she was younger, Maggie loved seeing new places and making new friends everywhere she went – now all she wants is to stay put.

Given that her parents have moved to Austin so that her mother can attend a six-month masseuse class, Maggie knows that once the class is over, the family will be packing up their stuff and moving again. Rather than making new friends only to have to leave them before the year is even over, Maggie resolves to not make any friends. She comes up with a plan guaranteed to keep her from being popular - by doing things like carrying a Star Wars lunch box to school and wearing a dirty mechanic’s jumpsuit. Unfortunately for Maggie, her plan starts to go awry when the things she does to keep her from being popular have the opposite effect.

How Not to Be Popular is a fun and funny read for anyone who knows what it is like to have to try and make new friends. Since Maggie’s family moves so much, she’s become quite adept at getting in with the in crowd at her new schools. However, each time her parents decide to move, it gets harder and harder for Maggie to leave her new friends. This time Maggie decides to forego friends – it will be easier on her heart this way. What she doesn’t count on, though, is that popularity seems to follow her, despite her best efforts to become a social outcast.

Maggie is a well-developed character, and although the reader can see the flaws in her plan, it’s still fun to see how hard she tries to keep from making friends. her parents, Les and Rosie, are also sources of comedy as they visit the school and do embarrassing things. Though How Not to Be Popular has brief mentions of adult subject matter, it is nonetheless more than appropriate for the YA crowd.