Mission (Un)Popular

Humphrey, A. (2011). Mission (Un)popular. New York: Disney/Hyperion. It's the start of seventh grade for Margot Button and her best friend Erika, and they're all set to choose the perfect outfits for the first day. Maybe this will be the year she will finally catch the eye of Gorgeous George, the guy she's had her eye on for years. But Erika's mother decides to move her to a parochial school in order to remove her from the more unsavory elements in public school. Although the girls vow to keep their friendship alive, through a series of miscommunications, things fall apart. In addition to having lost her best friend, Margot has a lot on her mind: Her eyebrows need plucking, her triplet siblings need minding, and her new stepfather needs ignoring. She feels lost at school without Erika and is relieved when Em, a transfer student from New York, befriends her. Em is outspoken and daring and gives the school Mean Girl, Sarah, a run for her money. Naturally, Sarah strikes back, and the war is on. As Em's campaign against Sarah escalates, Margot finds herself becoming increasingly popular with her classmates--but at what price? As she moves further from the person she once was and the friends she once had, Margot hardly recognizes herself. Once Margot realizes that Em has some dark secrets in her past and has no problem with stretching the truth, she also wonders how much she can really trust her new friend.

Middle grade readers will enjoy the humor and realism in this book while realizing how quickly things can go wrong when the truth is stretched even a tiny bit. The characters have some complexity, and even the antagonist has her own motivation for behaving as she does. While there is much to admire about Em, there is also much to disparage, and readers may find themselves thinking about the many reasons for certain kinds of human behavior and realizing that bullying comes in many different forms.

Favorite Lines: "It's weird, isn't it, how other people's photos are boring...but you can look at a photo from your own life for ages" (p. 375).

"He flipped his hair, and suddenly I could see it. Em hadn't been that far off when she's said he was like a Surfer Ken doll. Gorgeous George was always cool, always well dressed, and he was incredibly hot. But he was also kind of empty, and a little bit plastic. Like another accessory in Barbie's closet" (p. 380).