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Summary
Summary
Ask Annie your most complex interpersonal relationship questions. Go on, we dare you!
All letters to Annie are subject to publication in the Clayton High School Register. Names and e-mail addresses of correspondents guaranteed confidential.
High school junior Jenny Greenley is good at solving problems ... so good she's the school newspaper's anonymous advice columnist. Even if solving other people's problems doesn't make her own -- like not having a boyfriend -- go away, it's still fun. But when nineteen-year-old screen sensation Luke Striker comes to Jen's small town to research a role, he creates havoc that even levelheaded Jenny isn't sure she can repair ... especially since she's right in the middle of it.
Can Jen, who always manages to be there for everybody else, learn to take her own advice, and find true love at last?
Author Notes
Meg Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana on February 1, 1967. She recieved a fine arts degree from Indiana University, Meg moved to New York City, intent upon pursuing a career in freelance illustration. Illustrating, however, soon got in the way of Meg's true love, writing, and so she abandoned it and got a job as the assistant manager of an undergraduate dormitory at New York University, and writing on the weekends.
Meg wrote both The Princess Diaries and The Mediator: Shadowland (under the name Jenny Carroll), the first books in two series for young adults which happen to be about, among other things, teenage girls dealing with unsettling family issues. Her latest book is entitled, Insatiable.
Meg now writes full time, and lives in Key West, Florida with her husband.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cabot (Princess Diaries) revisits her Hoosier roots, taking something of a break from the glitzy world of Genovia's royalty. But not too much of a break, since this brisk and bubbly tale explores what happens when teen heartthrob Luke Striker attempts to spend a week posing as an ordinary high school student in a small Indiana town, in order to research his next movie role. Luke's host (and the novel's peppy narrator) is Jenny, a well-liked junior at Clayton High who has her own secrets: she anonymously pens "Ask Annie," the school paper's advice column, excerpts of which appear before each of the novel's chapters. And she nurses a half-acknowledged crush on the paper's editor, Scott, who is dating someone else. Shocked by the cruelty of real-life high school, Luke convinces Jenny to become a force for good-to no longer simply be everybody's pal but to champion the downtrodden (such as the school's least popular girl, Cara "Cow") and fight for what's right (the return of a favorite teacher's kidnapped Cabbage Patch doll). As a reward, of sorts, Luke promises to come back to town to take Jenny to the high school's Spring Fling. The down-to-earth high school setting, peopled with recognizable, fully realized characters and ably described by Jenny, provides a sturdy springboard for the over-the-top Hollywood plotline, which Cabot delivers with a wink. A snappy and fun read that is-no doubt-soon to be ready for its own close-up. Ages 12-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
As the anonymous author of her school newspaper's advice column, Jenny has lots of experience keeping secrets. Now she+s entrusted with the biggest secret yet: the new kid at school is really teen movie star Luke Striker. In Cabot's entertaining but far-fetched romantic comedy, Luke helps Jenny turn her high school into a more caring, accepting community. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-11. To research an upcoming movie role, teen actor and heartthrob Luke Striker goes undercover as a new student at a small Indiana high school. Junior Jenny Greenley (the archetypal girl-next-door) is assigned to be his student guide, and she must swear to help keep his identity a secret. Jenny is great at keeping secrets: no one has guessed that she is the face behind the school newspaper's agony column, "Ask Annie." This predictable but wholly satisfying combination of three love stories reads like a cross between a teen sitcom and Much Ado about Nothing0 . Cabot has an uncanny ear for both teen dialogue and interior monologue, and she punctuates the plot with aptly selected excerpts from "Ask Annie" and instant messages. The text is peppered with pop-culture references that may date the story eventually, but which, for the moment, give it an extra jolt of immediacy. --Debbie Carton Copyright 2004 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 10-Nothing much happens in the small town of Clayton, IN. At least not until major teen heartthrob, 19-year-old Luke Striker, comes to town to research a part for a new film project. Jen Greenley, a junior at the local high school and all-around friend to everyone, is assigned to show him around. The only problem is that no one besides Jen is supposed to know who he really is. Between keeping his identity a secret, lying to her best friend who's Luke's biggest fan, writing the advice column for the school paper, and developing a crush on her friend Scott who happens to already have a girlfriend, Jen is feeling a little overwhelmed. The characters are funny and engaging and the dialogue is just right; both elements redeem the somewhat predictable plot.-Ginny Collier, Dekalb County Public Library, Chamblee, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
When hunky television and movie actor Luke Striker goes undercover to Clayton, Indiana, to research the life of a typical high-school student for a movie he's about to star in, Jen Greenley, everyone's best friend and the school's emotional fix-it girl, is considered to be level-headed enough to be let in on the secret. Assigned to be his student guide, Jen teaches the handsome heartthrob all about the mysteries of life in the slow lane, at least until his secret is uncovered, which also has the unintended consequence of making Jen a temporary celebrity. Author Cabot loves telling stories about ordinary girls who are unexpectedly thrust into a spotlight that gives them not only the chance to shine, but also illuminates hidden parts of their personalities. In this instantly engaging, humorous first-person tale, Luke acts as the catalyst to allow Jen, who has always gotten along with everyone at the personal cost of subjugating her feelings about kindness and fair play, to use her personal and social power to make high school a nicer place--and even find love in the process. Great fun. (Fiction. 12+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Teen Idol Chapter One I witnessed the kidnapping of Betty Ann Mulvaney. Well, me and the twenty-three other people in first period Latin class at Clayton High School (student population 1,200). Unlike everybody else, however, I actually did something to try to stop it. Well, sort of. I went, "Kurt. What are you doing?" Kurt just rolled his eyes. He was all, "Relax, Jen. It's a joke, okay?" But, see, there really isn't anything all that funny in the way Kurt Schraeder swiped Betty Ann from Mrs. Mulvaney's desk, then stuffed her into his JanSport. Some of her yellow yarn hair got caught in the teeth of his backpack's zipper and everything. Kurt didn't care. He just went right on zipping. I should have said something more. I should have said, Put her back, Kurt. Only I didn't. I didn't because ... well, I'll get back to that part later. Besides, I knew it was a lost cause. Kurt was already high-fiving all of his friends, the other jocks who hang in the back row and are only taking the class (for the second time, having already taken it their junior year and apparently not having done so well) in hopes of getting higher scores on the verbal part of the SATs, not out of any love for Latin culture or because they heard Mrs. Mulvaney is a good teacher or whatever. Kurt and his buds had to hide their smirks behind their Paulus et Lucia workbooks when Mrs. Mulvaney came in after the second bell, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. As she does every morning, Mrs. Mulvaney sang, "Aurora interea miseris mortalibus almam extulerat lucem referens opera atque labores," to us (basically: "It's another sucky morning, now let's get to work"), then picked up a piece of chalk and commanded us to write out the present tense of gaudeo, -ere. She didn't even notice Betty Ann was gone. Not until third period, anyway, when my best friend Trina-short for Catrina: she says she doesn't think of herself as particularly feline, only, you know, I'm not so sure I agree -- who has her for class then, says that Mrs. Mulvaney was in the middle of explaining the past participle when she noticed the empty spot on her desk. According to Trina, Mrs. Mulvaney went, "Betty Ann?" in this funny high-pitched voice. By then of course the entire school knew that Kurt Schraeder had Betty Ann stuffed in his locker. Still, nobody said anything. That's because everybody likes Kurt. Well, that isn't true, exactly. But the people who don't like Kurt are too afraid to say anything, because Kurt is president of the senior class and captain of the football team and could crush them with a glance, like Magneto from X-Men. Not really, of course, but you get my drift. I mean, you don't cross a guy like Kurt Schraeder. If he wants to kidnap a teacher's Cabbage Patch doll, you just let him, because otherwise you'll end up eating your lunch all by yourself out by the flagpole like Cara Cow or run the risk of having Tater Tots hurled at your head or whatever. The thing is, though, Mrs. Mulvaney loves that stupid doll. I mean, every year on the first day of school, she dresses it up in this stupid Clayton High cheerleader outfit she had made at So-Fro Fabrics. And on Halloween, she puts Betty Ann in this little witch suit, with a pointed hat and a tiny broom and everything. Then at Christmas she dresses Betty Ann like an elf. There's an Easter outfit, too, though Mrs. Mulvaney doesn't call it that, because of the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing. Mrs. Mulvaney just calls it Betty Ann's spring dress. But it totally comes with this little flowered bonnet and a basket filled with real robin's eggs that somebody gave her a long time ago, probably back in the eighties, which was when some ancient graduating class presented Mrs. Mulvaney with Betty Ann in the first place. On account of them feeling sorry for Mrs. Mulvaney, since she's a really, really good teacher, but she has never been able to have any kids of her own. Or so the story goes. I don't know if it's true or not. Well, except for the part about Mrs. M. being a good teacher. Because she totally is. And the part about her not having any kids of her own. But the rest of it ... I don't know. What I do know is, here it is, almost the last month of my junior year -- Betty Ann had been wearing her summer outfit, a pair of overalls with a straw hat, like Huck Finn, when she disappeared -- and I was sitting around worrying about her. A doll. A stupid doll. "You don't think they're going to do anything to her, do you?" I asked Trina later that same day, during show choir. Trina worries that I don't have enough extracurriculars on my transcript, since all I like to do is read. So she suggested I take show choir with her. Except that it turns out that Trina slightly misrepresented what show choir is all about. Instead of just a fun extracurricular, it's turned out to be this huge deal -- I had to audition and everything. I'm not the world's best singer or anything, but they really needed altos, and since I guess I'm an alto, I got in. Altos mostly just go la-la-la on the same note while the sopranos sing all these scales and words and stuff, so it's cool, because basically I can just sit there and go la-la-la on the same note and read a book since Karen Sue Walters, the soprano who sits on the riser in front of me, has totally huge hair, and Mr. Hall, the director of the Troubadours -- that's right: our school choir even has its own name -- can't see what I'm doing. Teen Idol . Copyright © by Meg Cabot. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Teen Idol by Meg Cabot All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
