Book Review: All-American Girl

By Matt Berman

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What Parents Should Know
The parents, when they're present, are mostly clueless, but otherwise, despite the teen orientation, the values here are pretty traditional.

Common Sense Media Review
Meg Cabot has the rare ability to write novels that appeal to young teens, written in first-person teenspeak no less, that don't cause adult readers to become irritated or nauseated, or parents to become panicky. Samantha, despite her penchant for black clothing and mild rebellion, is a much nicer girl than she wants to be, and an appealingly confused heroine.

In between many of the chapters the author adds in Samantha's top ten lists, a cleverly sardonic and indirect shorthand method of conveying plot points and Sam's character. For instance, after she has to speak to the press after the shooting, her "top ten things not to do at a press conference" begins with "10. When the reporter from The New York Times asks if you were scared when Larry Wayne Rogers (a.k.a. Mr. Uptown Girl) pulled a gun out from under his rain poncho, it is probably better not to say no, that you were relieved, because you'd thought he'd been pulling out something else."

Already optioned by Disney, this novel has the same appeal as Cabot's earlier book-turned-movie, The Princess Diaries; a winning teen girl thrust against her will into the national spotlight, broad humor, and a sarcastic take on America's youth culture. Though marred by an absurdly pat ending (Samantha actually learns to like herself for who she is), it is an enjoyable romp.

From the Book
All the television news shows -- like 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Dateline, 20 / 20 -- wanted to do a feature on me and asked us to call them at our earliest convenience

I am so sure. Like there is an hour's worth of stuff to even say about me. My life so far has basically been just a long series of one humiliations after another. If they want to go in depth on my lisp and how I was cured of it by my irrational desire to call Kris Parks every bad S-word I could think of to her face, well, then, more power to them. But somehow I suspected they were after something a little more triumph-of-the-human-spirit-y.