BOOK REVIEW POPULAR BY MAYA VAN WAGENEN

Hey, everyone. I hope y'all are having a
great day, and today I'll be reviewing Popular by Maya Van Wagenen, and this
is a memoir in which an eighth-grade girl reads a popularity guide from the
1950s and decides to employ those tactics into her everyday life
at school and then she documents the effects. Probably like a lot of you guys, I first
heard about this book through Christine's "Popularity" video, which I'll
link down below, and when I saw this book at my Half Price, I decided to pick it up. Something that I
didn't realize until after I had it and after I was at home, flipping through the
pages, is that this book is signed by the author.

So it's signed. It says, "Redefine popular,"
and it has Maya Van Wagenen's signature in it. That makes me so curious as to who
owned this book before I did and why they decided to give it away. Anyway, so this is a little bit of a
difficult book to review because it's a memoir.

It's nonfiction, and I'm so used to only
reviewing fiction. This, because it's a memoir, is a recollection of events, and
in novels, authors are very good at making every scene intentional. So like, in works of fiction, all the
elements of a story are very malleable and authors have the capability and the
opportunity to change and manipulate all these story elements so that they can
create the maximum effect. You know, they want to create the best
and most effective story.

So that's how it works with fiction, but in a memoir,
that's not necessarily the case. So this book was written by an 8th
grader as far as I know. It kind of reads like this 8th grader's journal, because
Maya was in 8th grade when she decided to do this experiment. And it
reads like it was written by an 8th grader.

I mean, to give credit where credit is
due, that is so impressive--to be so young and to have completed and published a
book. So the writing of the memoir matches
the style of an 8th grader. It's very simple, it's very straightforward. However, it also feels very clean, but not
in a necessarily good way.

The writing and the events and the
reflections all feel very superficial, like they remain on the surface level.
Topics are touched upon briefly and then left alone without digging deeper. It's like what we're reading in this
memoir is only the tip of the iceberg, but there are so many things that are
deeper and darker underneath that we're not getting to see. Because nothing is dwelled upon for too long for further
analysis or reflection, it leaves the reader in a sort of
position where it's very very difficult to draw emotion out of them. There's a scene in the story where Maya
is crying really hard at school because of terrible news that she's heard, and I
wanted so badly to sympathize with her, but there's such a disconnect, I feel,
between the reader and the narrative just because of the way it's written so
cleanly, that the event didn't hit me as hard as it would have otherwise.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of things
that I could relate to in Maya's story. First off, the universal desire to be
liked and to be well liked. That's so easy to understand. I feel like
everyone at every age no matter what stage in life they're in, they face that
problem because everyone wants to be well-liked.

Beyond that desire for
popularity and respect, there are also a lot of very specific
things that I was so surprised to be able to relate to because it's really
never mentioned in other books. For example, there's a small detail where
Maya talks about how in her middle school, everyone uses mesh backpacks
because it's the school's way of discouraging bringing weapons to school.
And oh my goodness, that's exactly what my middle school did as well. Except
actually, my middle school discouraged backpack use entirely and so they were
like, "You know what? Just carry all of your stuff to all of your classes!" And we were
like, "What?" And so they were like, "Okay. Maybe that's a bit much.

You can use a backpack, but it has to be
mesh or clear," and so that's just something that I was very surprised to
see in a book. She also talks about drug dogs coming into her classrooms and lockdowns because of crime in the area. I totally relate. Actually, not completely
because that didn't happen to me in middle school, but it happened to me in
high school.

I've had to leave the classroom a couple
times so that drug dogs can come in and sniff around, and sometimes we go into
lockdown because there's crime in the neighborhood. But yeah, you know, that never happens in normal YA fiction, I guess, so to see
it in this memoir, to see it in nonfiction and to see my personal life--not "personal"
life, but, you know, like, school life-- reflected in a way that's not reflected
in other books was so interesting and so surprising to me. So this book is set in Brownsville,
Texas, which is super super south of Texas and it's on the border basically
between the USA and Mexico. And while I'm not that south, I'm still in what I would
consider South Texas, so that was also relatable.

So with
this book and with this experiment, Maya Van Wagenen aims to redefine what
popularity is, and that's a mission that I can support. This memoir has an
ultimate message that you should always be kind to everyone and try to talk to
new people, even if that's outside of your comfort
zone, and I think that message is super important. And it's one of those things
that you know is true, like, yes, you should be nice to everyone, yes, you
should talk to new people, but it's something that you don't always
employ. And it's especially hard to be kind to people and to talk to new people if you're in a situation where
everything kind of already feels very cemented into place, where people already
have their reputations and friendships are already formed, and so if you're in a
school, for example, that you've been attending for years and years, then it's
hard.

It's hard to put this message into practice, as opposed to if you're
going to a new school or if you're going to a short summer camp where, you know,
you know after three weeks that you probably won't see these people again. So it's harder to apply in some cases
than others, but regardless of the situation, I still think it's a very good
tip, I guess. I was a little startled when I realized that this message written by
an 8th grader was still something that I. Found very applicable as an
18-year-old about to go off to college in a month.

You know, like, when I go to college, I
should be open to talking to new people and I should be kind to everyone that I
meet and it's hard to do it sometimes, but if this eighth grader can do it, it's
inspiring in a way that makes you feel like you can do it too. I think the ultimate message that Maya Van Wagenen puts into her memoir is important and I think it shows that
young children can also be very insightful and that they shouldn't be
underestimated. However to get to that ultimate message,
you have to go through a lot of problematic stuff. The first chapters in this memoir are all about changing your
appearance--so losing weight, having good posture, wearing certain clothes,
and maintaining makeup.

Like, it was hard to read about this 8th grade girl dieting. But what I really could not understand
was that people at Maya's school would call Maya fat, and she would call herself fat, and she'd be like, "Oh yeah, I'm like
overweight," and then there are pictures of her from middle school in the book
and she's not overweight at all! I don't know what kind of standards everyone
else in this book is using but she looked completely fine to me. So it would just blow my mind when she
would talk about eating her small lunches and her stomach growling because
she was hungry, and I was like, "Why! Why are you doing this?" It just--it felt wrong to me, all the
chapters about changing your appearance felt wrong to me. I was afraid that it would give off the
wrong impression.

And of course, in the end of the memoir, Maya reflects on which
pieces of advice from the advice book she was reading actually made a
difference and which ones didn't, and so that kind of excuses how long we spend
on the appearance, but I mean, it was still uncomfortable to read. Something
that I don't know if I can really criticize, because this is a memoir and
not a work of fiction, is the pacing. So the format of this memoir is that each
month, she uses a new tip from the book and
then she documents the effects, right? But not all the tips have effects. So if this were a novel, I would say that
the plot dragged or that there was nothing exciting happening because when you're
reading a chapter when there's no noticeable effect in her documentation
based on the changes that she made, that wears on your patience a little and I
feel like normally, an editor would change that if this were a novel, but
because it's not a novel and because it's nonfiction, I just, I don't know if that's something
that you should ever change.

So it's hard. This is a difficult
criticism. I don't know if it's valid because it is a memoir and not a novel,
but sometimes it just felt like the plot wasn't going anywhere. Again, I know this isn't something Maya could
control, but I thought I would mention it anyway.

So overall, I thought Popular by Maya Van
Wagenen was an interesting and worthwhile read. I think younger readers, rather than older readers, would benefit
more from reading this book, but I still think that it can find an audience
regardless of age. I don't think it was the best version of
this story that it could be, but I still thought it was fine. So if you've read Popular, please let me
know your thoughts about it in the comments.

I would really really love to
know. Thanks so much for watching, I hope y'all have a fantastic day, and happy
reading! Goodbye!.