Product Description

Dyan Sheldon's vain, melodramatic, and utterly lovable Lola will appeal to any young reader who has angled for acceptance.

Mary Elizabeth Cep (or Lola, as she prefers to be called) longs to be in
the spotlight. But when she moves to New Jersey with her family and
becomes a student at Dellwood "Deadwood" High, Lola finds the role
of resident drama queen already filled - by the Born-to-Win, Born-to-
Run-Everything Carla Santini. Carla has always gotten everything she
wants - until Lola comes along and snags the lead in the school play.
Can Lola survive Carla’s attempts at retaliation? And once the curtain
goes up on the school play, which drama queen will take center stage?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1567280 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-26
• Released on: 2002-08-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Amazon.com
Mary Elizabeth, a.k.a. Lola, is accustomed to playing the starring role in the fascinating production that is her life. Her pottery-making single mom and bratty twin sisters are merely bit players in Lola's dramatic existence. But all this changes when she is forced to move from her beloved Manhattan to the boring suburbs of New Jersey. According to Lola, "living in the suburbs is like being dead, only with cable TV and pizza delivery." The worst part is that someone has already snagged the coveted Drama Queen of Suburbia title--and that someone is Carla Santini. Carla, who is "sophisticated, beautiful, and radiates confidence the way a towering inferno radiates heat," isn't about to let anyone take away her hard-earned crown. Undaunted, Lola tries out for and wins the lead in the school play, a role much desired by Carla. In retaliation, Carla makes the entire student body give Lola the silent treatment (and in addition scores tickets to a sold-out concert of Lola's favorite rock band). Can Lola crash the concert, crush Carla, and still have enough energy to wow everyone in the school production of Pygmalion? It's all in a day's work for Lola, Teenage Drama Queen.

With Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Dyan Sheldon has written a classic good girl vs. bad girl story and a rib-tickling romp through the petty kingdom (or in this case, queen-dom) of small-town high school popularity politics. The wide-open ending will have young drama-queens-in-training eagerly searching the shelves for the next installment of Lola's adventures. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly
When native New Yorker Mary Elizabeth Cep and her "astoundingly unimaginative" family move to New Jersey, Mary Elizabeth, who plans to be an actress some day, changes her name to Lola and zealously begins a campaign to enrich the "humdrum" lives of suburbanites. Unfortunately, Lola's new classmates are not quite ready to receive her guidance. They are too busy worshipping their reigning "drama queen," snooty Carla Santini, who is not about to share the spotlight on- or offstage with anyone, especially a loudmouthed city slicker named Lola. Thus begins the war between Carla and Lola to be No. 1. Carla is armed with sophistication, beauty, confidence and an entourage of admirers. Lola, on the other hand, has only a handful of weapons: an overactive imagination, the lead role in the school play and one loyal friend, Ella, "a free spirit waitingAno, beggingAto be released." Energetic, almost breathless first-person narrative relates Lola's bitter defeats and hard-earned triumphs in her rise to stardom at school. Pitting a deliciously despicable villainess against an irresistible heroine glittering with wit and charm, Sheldon (The Boy of My Dreams) pulls off a hilarious comedy of errors. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 6-10-An exuberant and hilarious celebration of the ups and downs of high school life. Teenaged Mary Elizabeth Cep has been misnamed; her mother calls her the "Drama Queen," but she's known for years that her true name is Lola. "Lola is romantic and mysterious. It's evocative and resonant. It's unusual-as I am." When Lola's divorced mother moves the family from New York City to suburban New Jersey, the teen promptly makes an enemy of Carla Santini, the undisputed head of both the popular "Born-to-Wins" and the smart "Born-to-Run-Everythings." However, Lola becomes friends with quiet Ella Gerard. When Lola beats out Carla for the coveted part of Eliza Doolittle in the school play, the adventure begins. From then on, the book is a nonstop one-upmanship contest between the two girls. Eventually the conflict involves Lola dragging Ella to New York for the last concert and farewell party of the pair's favorite rock group. The friends trek through some seedy neighborhoods while following a drunken rock star, and have a run-in with the police before they return feeling triumphant. Lola will rightfully take her place among the unforgettable and lively female characters of young adult novels. Like its heroine, the story is off-beat, outrageous, and utterly charming.
Jane Halsall, McHenry Public Library District, IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.