Reviewer: Sarah

Middle school, for many of us, was a time of great confusion.  There were training bras, and zits, and oops I forgot my deodorant, and oops the boy who used to be my friend is now my crush, and what do you mean I need glasses and braces and STIRRUP PANTS (why, early nineties, why?).  I had a lot of bad hair and bad clothes, but what I did have was lots of good books.  That said, if I had been able to read THE POPULARITY PAPERS, I think my middle school years might have been just a little easier.

Meet Lydia Goldblatt (sometimes called “Goldbladder” by the mean kids), a blond curly-girl with glasses and lots of gumption.  Her best friend, Julie Graham-Chang, is the quiet one, the artist/cartoonist, the short one who’s easy to overlook.  Junior high is looming, and Lydia realizes that neither she nor Julie are anywhere in the vicinity of popular.  They decide to spend sixth grade in the pursuit of popularity, but not in the traditional way.  Like the National Geographic explorers of old, Lydia and Julie begin a notebook of discovery, wherein they can document their findings after extensive observation, and then, Francis Bacon-like, apply the scientific method to test and see what works.  Case in point:  our heroines discover many popular girls have a blond streak in their hair.  Lydia attempts to lighten a swath of hair with bleach.  Under the sink bleach.  Burn your skin off bleach.  (Luckily she can hide the bald spot until the hair grows back.)  Lydia, as the outgoing one, has more interaction at first with the glitterati of her school, but Julie finds her own chances to mingle once she joins the field hockey team.

What really works in this painfully funny (graphic?) novel is the core friendship of Lydia and Julie.  The sincerity with which Ignatow writes is just wonderful to read, and there is such loving care in the crafting of their personalities, even down to the differences in their handwriting.  As this book is truly a journal of sorts, it reads like an intimate dialogue between two girls that you can’t help but root for from page one.  Sometimes they give each other their best, and sometimes they let each other down, but what remains is the truest element of friendship:  change will happen, but true friends will grow alongside you, and give you room to grow in your own way.  I love that Lydia and Julie both try things that are new to them, and both attempt things that are scary (and not always together), because junior high (and oh yeah, real life) is full of those moments.  Our heroines both have family issues as well:  Lydia lives with her high-strung single mother and emo sister, while Julie lives with her two dads, and both girls are trying desperately to transition out of “little kid” mode.

THE POPULARITY PAPERS will invariably draw comparisons to DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, and I hope that anyone who does will make the same connections I did.  Both PP and WIMPY utilize a lot of comic-style art.  Both PP and WIMPY take place in that shadowy land between kid-dom and adolescent-dom.  Both PP and WIMPY feature two best friends.  Both PP and WIMPY have a journal-like construct.  This is all very true.  You’re missing the point, however, if you don’t make this last connection, which I think is the only one really worth mentioning:  both PP and WIMPY are utterly HILARIOUS.  Lydia and Julie are comedy gold together, and I laughed out loud over and over again.  I have written before about how publishers and writers need to bring the funny if they want to reach kids today, and THE POPULARITY PAPERS delivers hard-core.  I am going to LOVE selling this book.  (If I had a time machine, I’d send one back to myself in 6th grade.  I mean it.)