Book: All-American Girl by Meg Cabot
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication date: 2002
Pages: 398

Source: Purchased

Summary: Samantha is the middle girl. Her older sister is popular; her younger sister is brainy. Sam carves her niche as the arty, quirky sister who paints ironic daisies on her combat boots with Wite Out. When her parents sign her up for art lessons after determining that her low German grades had something to do with her entrepreneurial art activities (drawing her class mates with their favorite celebrities), Sam takes it as punishment and approaches the whole project with much less enthusiasm than her parents probably hoped for. Sam’s life gets more complicated when she stops a presidential assassin outside of the art studio, realizes the cute guy in her art class is the son of the President of the United States, and is proclaimed as a hero by a grateful nation.

Thoughts: Meg Cabot totally stole the best fantasy I had when I was fifteen and, you know, added an actual plot with some witty dialogue to turn it into this book. Apparently, I wasn’t quite as weird as I thought. Maybe I wasn’t the only girl to imagine that, given the right circumstances, I could be a hero, do the right thing, and find myself in the same room as the most powerful people in the world. Oh, and one of them would just happen to have this cute son who would like me, too. It could happen.

Appeal: This book is obviously meant to appeal to girls, although it would make a good pink read choice for a boy with an interest in the activities of Washington, D.C. For either gender, this is a lighthearted read. In spite of the mention a few political issues and exploring some fairly sophisticated aspects of art and creativity and life, the book never takes itself too seriously.

Challenges: This is Book 10 of my Buy One Book and Read It challenge hosted by My Friend Amy’s blog.

Reviews: Anastasia of Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog also enjoyed the pure fun of this book: Review: All-American Girl by Meg Cabot (2002). She questioned, as I do, the need for a sequel, but later read it and liked it, too: Review: Ready or Not by Meg Cabot. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be reading the sequel.

Have you read this book or its sequel? What did you think?