So Yesterday

Starred review from October 4, 2004
Aptly-named Hunter spots street trends for "a certain shoe company named after a certain Greek god." When he meets Jen, he notices her unique shoelaces, and realizes she is an Innovator, a person who invents trends (he's a Trendsetter, someone who is "cool, so when they pick up an innovation, it becomes
cool"). Mandy, Hunter's boss, invites Hunter and Jen to do some "original thinking," but when the two arrive at the location, they find only her cell phone—and "the coolest shoes we'd ever seen." The pair begins their search for Mandy and the people behind the shoes, before the "bad guys" get Hunter. They depend on other cool hunters, from tech-savvy Lexa to high-society Hillary, to help decipher the clues, and they take risks themselves (going undercover to a posh party, breaking into buildings). There's fun to be had (at the party, rich guests get shampoo samples that turn out to be purple dye), and while readers may lose track of pieces of the plot (or not quite believe the roller skating leader of the underground), they will get swept up in the mystery. Hunter weaves in compelling stories, such as how purple became associated with royalty, and draws a parallel between the spreading of trends and a flu epidemic. (Though the hero refuses to name brands, readers will quickly figure out product names based on his clues.) Ultimately, Westerfeld's (Midnighters
) entertaining adventure doubles as a smart critique on marketing and our consumer culture. Ages 12-up.

September 15, 2004
Gr. 7-12. Like M. T. Anderson's " Feed "(2002), this hip, fascinating thriller aggressively questions consumer culture. Seventeen-year-old Hunter lives up to his name. A "cool hunter," he's paid by corporations to comb his native Manhattan in search of street style that could become the next new trend. Hunter meets and falls for fellow teen culture-watcher Jen, just before Hunter's boss mysteriously disappears. Jen and Hunter hold the most clues, and their wild, increasingly dangerous search uncovers a plot to subvert a consumer system that dictates what is cool. Readers may have trouble sorting through some of the plot's connections and anticonsumerist messages. But Hunter tells a captivating, suspenseful story about how product desire is created, using a first-person voice that is cynical ("magazines are just wrapping for ads") and precociously wise (he riffs on the origins of everything from the Internet to neckties) while remaining believably naive and vulnerable when it comes to girls. Teens will inhale this wholly entertaining, thought-provoking look at a system fueled by their purchasing power.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

September 5, 2005
A teenage male Trendsetter (one who spots trends and makes them "cool") for a shoe company wants to introduce an Innovator (one who invents trends) peer to his boss—but the boss has disappeared and foul play is suspected. PW
's starred review said, "this entertaining adventure doubles as a smart critique on marketing and our consumer culture." Ages 12-up.

January 1, 2005
While one might think that the market-research thriller would be a genre of interest mostly to adults (think of Max Berry's Jennifer Government and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition), teens are in fact the most instinctive of "cool hunters," a reality Westerfeld makes impressive thematic and narrative use of in this lively novel. Seventeen-year-old Hunter has a great job: spotting, grooming, and spreading trends in an insatiable consumer culture, looking for "the Nod" -- "the slight incline of the head that means... 'I want it.'" The book is set in contemporary New York, but, devoted as its characters are to finding the Next Cool Thing, it emanates an attractive edginess and often feels like it's just about to tip into sci-fi territory. Hunter considers himself a Trendsetter, but his new friend Jen is even hipper, an Innovator; together, they happen upon a pair of shoes that seem impossibly cool, right down to the logo, the most famous sportswear symbol in the world bisected by a diagonal bright red line, an "anti-logo." These shoes propel what is essentially a book-length chase scene assiduously annotated with much clever dialogue and thinking about why we want the things we do. The writing is fairly sophisticated, but better readers will surely give this caper the Nod.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

January 1, 2005
"Coolhunters" Hunter and Jen find themselves in trouble when they find a pair of running shoes that seem impossibly cool. In this market-research thriller, the shoes propel what is essentially a book-length chase scene assiduously annotated with much clever dialogue and thinking about why we want the things we do.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)