Queen Bee

August 8, 2005
This bubbly, fun and smart new series is the second big release from Scholastic's Graphix imprint. Clugston, well-known for her edgy and stylish Blue Monday
and Scooter Girl
, has done it again in this stinging portrayal of popularity battles between beautiful middle-schoolers. Haley, the new girl, is determined to be popular and, in spite of the occasional gaffe resulting from her runaway psychokinetic powers, she succeeds. When an even newer girl shows up to challenge her new role as queen bee, it turns out that she possesses the same powers as Haley, and the battle begins. Energetic drawings and the girl-against-girl conflict recall the teen dramas of Archie, Betty and Veronica, while the climactic musical face-off carries off its Josie and the Pussycats homage with flair. Direct references to the best of the modern-day teen genre spice up the story, pointing out that Queen Bee
is right at home alongside Heathers
and Mean Girls
. Clugston knows how mean girls can really be; her dialogue bristles with barbed rejoinders and she never glosses over the true nastiness of the girl fight. Everything works in this funny, charming and true story, right down to the closing mystery of why Alexa and Haley look so much alike.

January 1, 2006
Gr 6-8 - -Like most middle-school girls, Haley Madison is obsessed with popularity. When she transfers to a new school, she finally has a fresh start -if she can keep her pesky psychokinesis under control -no more exploding lunch trays, no more embarrassing baseball incidents. Her first day, she befriends Trini, who is nice but certainly not popular. Haley works her way up the social ladder with fake laughs and manipulation. Then, beautiful Alexa shows up. She's campaigning to be the new queen bee and she shares Haley's powers. A spectacular face-off ensues at a talent show. Although the story ends predictably, readers will relate to both girls. The panel illustrations effectively use black space to frame the characters' often-jealous emotions. Haley's maybe boyfriend sports a spiky haircut and a -London Calling - T-shirt. He's a nice change from the typical -prince - love interest. As to be expected, the characters constantly drop pop-culture references. This book will be popular with fans of the author's -Blue Monday - series (Oni Pr.)." -Sadie Mattox, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Gr. 5-8. In Clugston's graphic-novel version of middle-school cliques, Haley Madison recognizes that her status as a social outcast is as much due to her peers' experiments with shunning as her own geeky tendencies. When she starts a new school, she determines to become one of the social elite, rebuffing the friendly overtures of kids she might have once befriended in order to curry favor with the school's status queens. It's tough to miss similarities to Rosalind Wiseman's " Queen Bees and Wannabes" (2002) and the movie " Mean Girls," but Clugston delivers a couple of twists: the artwork has a touch of " manga,"and Haley has psychokinetic powers. The connection between image and text is nicely balanced, and the psychokinetic element folds smoothly into the story, which speaks to self-discovery, values, and the bitter truth about the social dynamics of middle-school.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)