What those girls are feeling, their emotions, are no different from what an adult feels, she said.

She says she gets her material from her world - the adult world. It exists - those toxic pressures to conform, to run with the in crowd - not just in kids' lives, but in Harrison's too. So, I'm not going to write a gosh, golly book just to pretend that this stuff doesn't exist.' 'It'd be great if one of them could go, 'Yeah, that is really terrible about our society and I don't want to go down that road.' This is the age when they're all so impressionable, but they are also so aware. I don't like it, but it's a fact,' Harrison said. With worries about clothes, weight, boys, money and school, to name a few, these children are under a lot of pressure. Whatever her intention, Harrison's books touch a nerve - a raw nerve - for middle-school girls. I mean, I drop 50 brand names in a couple of chapters and it's the point of insanity.' I mean, I truly think that the obsession with this stuff is so over the top and so crazy, that, to me, it's funny, and I think the readers get it. 'I am pointing out something in our culture that I think is actually very unhealthy,' she said. Harrison said all the references to designer clothing and materialism was intended to be completely satirical. It's like, you know, saying 'Harry Potter is not real, but wouldn't we all love to be magic and be able to do magic?' It's that same thing.' What would it feel like to do that?' Dare to dream.

I, being the person that never got to wear designer clothes growing up, as most girls in the country can't,' Harrison said. We visited Harrison in her office near her home in Laguna Beach to talk to her about this phenomenon - and what it means for kids. 'The Clique' books have plenty of critics - feminists who say they send the wrong messages about appearance and body image, conservatives who find the characters' scheming behavior appalling, liberals who can't stand the avalanche of brand name dropping on every page.īut the books sell - 6 million copies so far. 'They're wrong, but it's just fun to read about them.' 'It's really riveting and you really like to read them because you just get captured in them and all the things they say and the things they do,' Zoey, another reader, said.

The pretty committee strikes back