Title of Book: Teen IdolAuthor: Meg CabotCharacters: Jen Greenley, Luke Striker, Scott Jones, Trina Kiloskwi, Ms Kellogg, Courtney DeckardSetting: Bellville High SchoolTheme: Trust nobody but yourself.
About the author:Meg Cabot was born on 1 February, 1967, during the Chinese astrological year of the Fire Horse, a notoriously unlucky sign. Fortunately she grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, where few people were aware of the stigma of being a fire horse - at least until Meg became a teenager, when she flunked freshman Algebra twice and then decided to cut her own hair. After six years as an undergraduate at Indiana University, Meg moved to New York City (in the middle of a sanitation worker strike) to pursue a career as an illustrator, at which she failed miserably, forcing her to turn to her favourite hobby writing novels. She worked various jobs to pay the rent, including working as the assistant manager of a 700 bed freshmen dormitory at NYU for ten years.
She is now the author of nearly fifty books for both adults and teens, selling fifteen million copies worldwide, many of which have been #1 New York Times bestsellers, most notably The Princess Diaries series, which is currently being published in over 38 countries, and was made into two hit movies by Disney. In addition, Meg wrote the Mediator and 1-800-Where-R-You? series (on which the television series, Missing, was based), two All-American Girl books, Teen Idol, Avalon High, How to Be Popular, Pants on Fire, Jinx, a series of novels written entirely in email format (Boy Next Door, Boy Meets Girl, and Every Boy's Got One), a mystery series (Size 12 Is Not Fat/ Size 14 Is Not Fat Either/Big Boned), and a chick-lit series called Queen of Babble.
Meg is now writing a new middle grade series...
Teen Idol
The author's description of Chinese astrology is inaccurate. A "Fire Horse" can be incredibly lucky or unlucky, but there is nothing in the astrology that makes the Fire Horse "a notoriously unlucky sign."
Further, how does Chinese astrology influence a young woman in Indiana. Nothing in her background suggests that she is Chinese. As for the stigma of her Chinese astrological sign, I will let the reader try to explain how this stigmatization caused her to failed algebra. Her writing career appears to be the product of skill and tenacity rather than by astrological influence.
As for the book, which the writer turns to almost as an afterthought, it may qualify as moderately tolerable children's literature, but I recall a line that came into my head as I went through this essay: "a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet."
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