15-year-old lands memoir deal

[beer good]

...sounds ridiculous, right? But the idea here seems interesting, I think:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/15-year-old-lands-book-deal-for-memoir_b73043

15-year-old Maya Van Wagenen has inked a book deal for a YA memoir called Popular: Vintage Wisdom for the Modern Geek.
Published by Penguin Young Readers Group’s Dutton Children’s Books imprint, the book will chronicle the teenager’s efforts to follow a 1950s self-help book called Betty Cornell’s Teen-age Popularity Guide, “applying the quaint-yet-timeless instructions to her contemporary life and exploring what it truly means to be popular.” Writers House agent Dan Lazar negotiated the two-book deal with publisher Julie Strauss-Gabel. Here’s more from the release:

When she was eleven, her family moved to Brownsville, Texas. The convergence of her awkward adolescence, culture shock, and the violent drug war in this colorful border town inspired Maya to begin a unique social experiment. She spent her eighth grade year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell, to see the effect it would have on her social standing. The results were painful, funny and profound, and included a wonderful and unexpected surprise—befriending and meeting Betty herself.​

As a look at how things have changed for those growing up now as opposed to in the 50s, it might actually be a worthwhile book. Assuming all the usual stuff about it actually being good etc.

 

[Meadow337]

hmmm not that I don't think some 15 year olds might have something to say, I think I prefer my memoirs to come from some one with some actual life to memoirise.

 

[beer good]

True, but that's the point here: she's not writing about an extensive life, she's writing about what's expected of her as someone with no life experience of her own.

 

[Meadow337]

I still don't think I will be rushing out to buy it Ok sure it sounds like an interesting proposition - can advice from yesteryear still be applicable today and what would happen if you tried to apply it? However I'm not entirely convinced a 15 year old has the life experience necessary to put the experiment into a broader context to explain, even in terms of her own experience, why certain things worked and why others didn't.

BTW I suspect that the fact that she was drawn to using advice from a book published before she was born may have been a huge contributing factor to her so-called 'unpopularity'. This is not the usual kind of behaviour that makes a teen popular these days.

 

[beer good]

BTW I suspect that the fact that she was drawn to using advice from a book published before she was born may have been a huge contributing factor to her so-called 'unpopularity'. This is not the usual kind of behaviour that makes a teen popular these days.

I would assume that that's the point.