August 'Book Club' Column
Written by: Jody

Book Column is one of Portrait Magazine's more recent monthly columns. Each month Jody will bring you the low down on the latest and greatest teen and young adult books!

Meg Cabot

Since 1998 Meg Cabot has written more than 40 books… Eat your heart out, J.K. Rowling. Not only does Meg Cabot supply her readers with enough books to spend their time with, she knows exactly what her readers want to read. That is probably the main reason why her books are such a success all over the world. For example, in 2003 ‘The Princess Diaries’ was voted ‘one of the nation’s 100 best-loved novels’ by the British public, and lots of teenagers all over the world will probably agree with that. If you liked the Disney movie ‘The Princess Diaries’ (starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews), you’ll definitely want to be introduced to the world of Meg Cabot’s other books.

Meg Cabot was born February 1 in 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana as Meggin Patricia Cabbot. She mostly writes romantic comedies for teens and adults and has written and published almost 40 books. Meg is best known for her New York Times #1 best-selling book series ‘The Princess Diaries’, which was adapted into a movie by Disney. Meg Cabot has more than 15 million copies of her books in print worldwide, her website MegCabot.com averages about 61,000 visitors a month and her online book club MegCabotBookClub.com averages 15,000 visitors a month.

Next to the famous ‘The Princess Diaries’ series, Meg Cabot has written 2 more series of books: ‘The Mediator’ and ‘1-800-Where-R-You’. ‘The Mediator’ series consists of 6 books, which are about 16-year-old Suze Simon. Suze is a mediator, which means she can talk to ghosts. Not only can she talk to them, she can also touch, hug, kick and even kiss them. Suze’s life was great, until her mom suddenly decided to get married to a man named Andy. The whole family moved to California, including Suze’s new step-brothers. To make things even worse, her new bedroom comes complete with the ghost of a man named Jess, who died 150 years ago…

Meg’s ‘1-800-Where-R-You’ books tell the story of Jessica Mastriani. Jessica is anything but a normal, average American girl. She has acquired a power that helps her find missing people after getting hit by lightning. As soon as the U.S. government finds out about this, they want Jessica to find missing people for them. Even the ones that don’t want to be found. Jessica has to choose whether to use her powers for good or for evil.

Meg Cabot also writes books for older readers, for example ‘Size 12 is not fat’ (a mystery chick lit!), ‘Every boy’s got one’, ‘The boy next door’ and her latest book, ‘Queen Babble’.

Meg Cabot is a writer, who obviously knows what teenagers want to read these days. Even though she is 39 years old, you still have the feeling you are reading a story written by someone just like you, someone who really knows how hard life can be sometimes and that high school is not always the best time of your life.