Brand-new Emily

Ginger Rue's first books is much deeper than it looks. Emily is picked on at her new school because of unfortunate experiences in her first few days there. When she gets a chance to meet a teen heartthrob at a movie shoot new her town and learns information about him, she uses this to secure the services of his PR manager. There is a lot of information about public relations and how celebrities and products are advertised and hyped, but the story is so breezy and fun that students won't realize how much they are learning. The cover will date itself very quickly, although the contents won't, since the fads and celebrities mentioned are predominantly pretend. There are a lot of subplots going on-- Emily's mother has passed away, her uncle and father are struggling to care for her, school life evolves around her. Very enjoyable, a bit unrealistic, but a good companion to Laurie Gwen Shapiro's Brand X: The Boyfriend Account.

And thanks to Finn, who commented (about library redecoration) that smiley faces and owls (which is not a serious consideration; I'm just torturing my principal) may not be boy friendly decoration. Hmmm. The smiley faces are already there, and I thought of them as gender neutral, but Finn has a point. I'm working on a collection of bulldogs (our school's mascot), but that's an expensive proposition, and are stuffed bulldogs any less cute?