Popular: A Memoir

I loved everything about this book, it was adorable, heartfelt, inventive, and daring. I can't believe fifteen year old Maya von Wagenen has already achieved more in her life than I have. Kudos to her! I wish I had been as brilliant as her to come up with this awesome social experiment!

When Maya was eleven and starting the eighth grade, her father rediscovered an old thrift shop gem, "Betty Cornell's Teenage Popularity Guide," an awesome guide to amazingness from the fifties. Instead of scoffing at the outdated ideas and old trends, Maya's mother challenged her to live the book and live out the ideals, diets, fashions, and manners from that era for an entire year. Painfully shy and at the bottom of the social scale Maya decided to give it a shot. The result of her year long social experiment is this awesome memoir that reads like a personal diary. In it Maya shares, pictures, tips, drawings, musings from life, school, and church and observations about how kids from her school are handling her changes.

It's awesome book and it's amazing how many of the tips and lessons from Betty Cornell's book still hold true. Sixty years later those words help change a shy awkward girl into a confident, outgoing, and happy girl. A definite must read!!!! It's funny, emotional, awkward, and honest. Great for mother daughter book clubs, bookworms, fifties fashionistas, and more. LOVED it!!!