So Yesterday (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "CAN I TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR SHOE?..." (more)
Key Phrases: hoi aristoi, bottle jerseys, cool hunting, New York, Futura Garamond, Mwadi Wickersham (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-10–New York City is the backdrop for this trendy, often surreal novel with a message about the down-and-dirty business of inventing and marketing pop-cultural fads. Hunter Braque, 17, is part of a focus group that views advertisements for shoes. A product gets the nod if it is "skate," but it is more important to point out what might be "uncool." When the teen brings Jen to the next meeting, she spots uncool right away and lets Hunter's boss, Mandy, know. The next day, the woman tells Hunter that the client appreciated Jen's original thinking, and that their help is needed for a "big deal." Jen and Hunter quickly find themselves caught up in a strange turn of events when Mandy disappears. Their search for her begins in an abandoned building in Chinatown and leads to a wild, drunken party at the Museum of Natural History where people are viewing advertisements for a new shampoo. This is a somewhat entertaining story, but awkward phrasing throughout defeats the "coolness," and the scenes involving Hunter's epidemiologist dad slow down the plot. Readers will better appreciate the satire and humor about the consumer world in M. T. Anderson's Feed (Candlewick, 2002), in which the characters are far more realistic.–Kelly Czarnecki, Bloomington Public Library, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

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. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Razorbill; 1 edition (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159514000X
• ISBN-13: 978-1595140005
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #901,912 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: SO YESTERDAY, September 21, 2004

By	Richie Partington "http://richiespicks.com" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"The guy walking past was wearing a shirt five sizes too big (innovated by gangbangers to hide guns in their waistbands), shorts down below his knees (innovated by surfers to save their thighs from getting sunburned), and oversized shoes (innovated by skaters to save their feet from injury). Together all of these once-practical ideas made the guy look like he'd been hit by a shrink ray and was about to disappear into his clothes screaming, 'Help me!' in an ever-tinier voice."

Why did our ninth grader begin wearing pajama pants to school? Why, when she wears them, must the top of those pajama pants be folded over just so, to reveal the tag and the inside of the waistband? Why did Target start carrying rack after rack of pajama pants in dozens of patterns?

How about a couple of years ago, when all of the kids I knew began either buying peds or feeling compelled to fold their regular white socks down into their shoes so that no part was revealed to the public? Why did they begin to lace their shoes in a manner that caused the kids to fall out of them every fifth step (or to land on their faces if they actually tried running in them)?

Why, also a number of years back, did an army of girls begin wearing sweatshirts over only their arms?

It doesn't matter at which middle school I booktalk. Wherever I look, the kids will simultaneously begin making the same "fashion statement."

And does anybody really think that Britney, Madonna, Christina, or Beyonce themselves think up those looks that are eagerly copied by millions?

"One thing about being a Cool Hunter, you realize one simple fact: Everything has a beginning.
"Nothing always existed. Everything had an Innovator."

Hunter Braque is a Cool Hunter. Jen Jones is an Innovator. Their chance meeting in Manhattan's East River Park leads to a wild and intense three day roller coaster ride for the pair, and takes readers on a reality trip into the big stakes world of fashion fads and trends.

I'm no babe in the woods, myself. I'm a guy with a degree in Business, who once earned an "A" in Marketing as manager of the group that won that semester's computer-simulated car manufacturing competition. But I picked up all sorts of fascinating information while my eyes were glued to SO YESTERDAY. For instance, Hunter tells this story which actually ties in with those three days we follow Jen and him through New York City:

"Start with a mollusk, wind up with an empire.
"Sounds tricky, but the Phoenicians managed it about four thousand years ago. Their tiny sliver of a kingdom was wedged between the Mediterranean Sea and a vast desert: no gold mines, no olive trees, no amber waves of grain anywhere in sight. The only thing the Phoenicians had going for them was a certain species of shellfish, commonly found lying around down at the beach. These shellfish were tasty but had one problem--if you ate too many of them, your teeth turned purple.
"Naturally, most people were annoyed by this. They probably said stuff like, 'Those shellfish aren't bad, but who wants purple teeth?' and didn't think much more about it.
"Then one day an ancient Innovator got this crazy idea...
"Okay, imagine you live in Egypt or Greece or Persia back then and you're rich. You've got all the gold, olive oil, and grain you want. But all you ever get to wear is cloth robes that come in the following colors: light beige, medium beige, dark beige. You've seen the Bible movies: everyone's totally decked out in earth tones--that's all they had, that's all they could imagine having.
"Then one day along comes a boatload of Phoenicians, and they're selling purple cloth. Purple!
"Throw that beige wardrobe away!
"For a while purple is the thing, the biggest fad since that whole wheel craze. After a lifetime spent wearing sixteen shades of beige, everyone's lining up to buy the cool new cloth. The price is crazy high, partly due to demand and partly because it happens to take about 200,000 shellfish to make one ounce of dye, and pretty soon the Phoenicians are rolling in dough (actually they're rolling in gold, olive oil, and grain, but you get the picture).
"A trading empire is born. And talk about branding: Phoenicia is the ancient Greek word for 'purple.' You are what you sell.
"After a while, however, an interesting thing happens. The people in charge decide that purple is too cool for just anyone to wear. First they put taxes on purple cloth, then pass a law against the hoi polloi wearing purple (as if they could afford it), and finally make purple robes the sole property of kings and queens.
"Over the centuries this dress code becomes so widespread and so ingrained that even now, four thousand years later, the color purple is still associated with royalty throughout Europe. And all this because an Innovator who lived forty centuries ago figured he could make something cool out of the purple-teeth problem."

I've been a major fan and advocate of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY and FEED, two outstanding books that include themes of American consumer compulsion and overindulgence. SO YESTERDAY is one heck of a companion to both of these titles. Through Hunter and Jen's harrowing adventures amid abandoned buildings, fancy parties, electronic spy networks, and high tech double-crosses, readers will surely look in the mirror and wonder who is responsible for this week's "New Look."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read this book today!, November 30, 2006

By	cominghome15 (California, USA) - See all my reviews

Hunter Braque, 17, is a Trendsetter, spotting out new trends in the hip NYC scene for various retail companies. Jen is his crush, whom he spotted as an "Innovator", one who starts trends. They're both part of a bigger pyramid known as the "cool pyramid".

One day a string of events is set off when Hunter's boss goes missing, leaving only her cell phone behind in an abandoned building. When Hunter and Jen go investigate, they find a mysterious load of the coolest shoes they've ever seen. Yet where did the shoes come from? Soon Hunter and Jen find themselves at a launch party sponsored by a secretive group of people known as Jammers who are dedicated to marketing confusion for the downfall of consumerism. As Hunter and Jen become more and more involved, they realize they have been caught in the middle--between the giant retail corporations and the small, but equally powerful Jammers.

So Yesteray is an intriguing novel that really caught my attention. Recommended to anyone who wants a cool and original read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scott Westerfeld's SO YESTERDAY, March 11, 2006

By	Jonathan Stephens "Jonathan Stephens" (Huntington Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: So Yesterday (Paperback)

"Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package out aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart." ~ SO YESTERDAY

Cool is the new black. Oh nevermind. Scott Westerfeld's young adult novel SO YESTERDAY is a clever chase after what exactly is cool and who defines it, or (perhaps better said) who finds it. Teens either want to be told what is cool, or they want to tell the world what is cool. After all, everything cool had a beginning and a beginner, a starter, a creator, an innovator.

See, the world divides up nicely:

Innovators
Trend Setters
Early Adopters
Consumers
and
Laggards (aka Classicists).

Cargo pants...wide belts that don't go through any loops...gaucho pants...propeller hats (okay, so that never really caught on)...patches with safety pins...heelies...wife beaters...chained-up wallets...etc. Wrack your brain for the most obscure trend, and someone started that too.

Our friend Hunter is a trend setter in search of an innovator, and he finds one in standard, logo-exile Jen. And after he finds her, his weekend spirals into a frenzied flight from the anti-client (No, I'm not going to tell you about them) and a welcomed discovery of who he hasn't known he is. Until now. Until Jen.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens