Meg Haston

When popular middle schooler Kacey Simon gets glasses and braces and is rejected by her crowd, she befriends a boy who is in a punk rock band and discovers some things about friendship, relationships, and herself.

How to Rock Braces and Glasses

Amanda Kordeliski

I received this as an ARC at ALA and was excited to read it because it appeared geared to MS girls. The story is a mean-girl gets a dose of her own medicine and becomes a better person story and I just read it will also be a (or is currently) a new sitcom on Nick. 

**Spoilers below***

There are several things about the novel that don't ring true to me and I feel it would have been better if the novel had been set in a high school. The middle school has a full blown TV station, newspaper and produces a spring musical. There appears to be no faculty supervision for either the TV station or the newspaper, with Kaycee flaying students with vishously biting comments every week and the newspaper printing constant jabs at her newly aquired lisp from her braces. I'm sorry, I have a hard time believing that even 20 years ago a faculty would allow this type of behavior and in today's school with a constant emphasis on bullying this just doesn't fly. 

The one teacher, "Sean", who is the drama/government teacher appears to be a mean girl in disguise. After observing Kaycee's lisp at rehearsal for the spring play the teacher calls her mother for a conference. Kaycee grumbles she is now being checked up on and must wear her glasses in class because now her teacher knows, Kaycee is humiliated in class and the students in the class continually mock her for her lisp. At the end of the day the teacher has her come to the counselor's office and "due to what he witnessed as rehearsal and in the classroom today" fires Kaycee from the play. Really? A teacher allows the mean girls in class to publicly mock another student and then rewards said student by giving her the lead in the play? I think not.

The end is wrapped up in a nice bow in the last few pages and the stage is set for a sequel. Chick lit is very popular in my middle school and this book will see a lot of circulation but for me the novel is as disingenuine as the mean girls the plot revolves around.

Read the book that inspired the Nickelodeon TV show! Perfect for fans of Middle School and Awkward. Super-stylish and uber-harsh, Kacey Simon is the social dictator of Marquette Middle School. But when an eye infection and a visit to the dentist leave her with giant glasses, a mouth full of metal, and...a littthp, Kacey is dismissed by her popular friends, falling so far down the social ladder she can barely see the top, even with her magnifying specs. With nowhere else to turn, Kacey has to hang with her nerdy neighbor and a boy who walks to beat of his own drum, but she's determined to reclaim her throne. Will she climb back to the top? Or will she discover that hitting rock bottom kind of...rocks?

Milana Marie Waller

This book it too awesome. Stop reading the stupid reveiw. Your wasting time that you could be reading this book. If you are still reading this STOP. NOW. Go buy the book and read it. Oh my gosh stop reading this youre wasting you time

Caterina P.

Reilly

Paula Espinosa

When popular middle schooler Kacey Simon gets glasses and braces and is rejected by her crowd, she befriends a boy who is in a punk rock band and discovers some things about friendship, relationships and herself.

How to Rock Braces and Glasses

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