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All American Girl

Author	Meg Cabot
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	All-American Girl series
Genre(s)	Young adult novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	2002
Media type	Print (Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-330-41555-7
Followed by	Ready or Not

All American Girl is a Young adult novel written by Meg Cabot for teenagers.

The story is about a girl named Samantha Madison who lives in Washington, D.C. She is a sophomore outcast at John Adams Preparatory School and has only one friend, Catherine. Sam is a huge fan of Gwen Stefani and often laments that she is not more like Gwen. Unlike Meg Cabot’s Mia Thermopolis in the The Princess Diaries, Sam is against popular culture and dyes her entire wardrobe black because she is “mourning for her generation.” She often feels inferior because her older sister, Lucy, is a cheerleader, and therefore one of the most popular girls in school, and her younger sister, Rebecca, is so intelligent that she takes college-level classes at a special school. Sam also believes she is in love with Lucy’s boyfriend Jack. Jack is the complete social opposite of big sister Lucy, having an artistic yet rebellious attitude to life claiming that teenagers need to fight the system.

'All American Girl' starts with Sam getting caught selling celebrity portraits, which she creates in her German notebook. Her mother, an environmental lawyer, decides that if Sam is given an outlet for her creativity, Sam might get better grades in German. Her mother enrolls her into a drawing class taught by a well-known artist, Susan Boone. She is compared to an elf queen by Sam at their first meeting. The first art lesson goes horribly wrong when her art teacher states that Sam cannot "draw what she sees". Taking Jack's advice about 'fighting the system', she decides she does not want to come back to art class, especially since she embarrassed herself in front of the vaguely familiar David, another student in the class who seemed to pay attention to her—something Sam has not experienced before, because guys usually seem to think that she's weird. When Sam’s housekeeper Theresa drops her off for the next lesson, she waits until Theresa leaves before spending the duration of her art class in the next-door music store. Sam notices a strange man listening to Billy Joel’s "Uptown Girl" a.k.a. Mr. Uptown Girl over and over. She refers to him as Mr. Uptown Girl. When she leaves the music store, the President’s motorcade stops in front of the cookie store next door. The president (only referred to as Mr. President) walks into the cookie store. As she waits for her ride on the corner, Mr. Uptown Girl begins to pull out a gun, ready to assassinate the President. Sam instinctively distracts the man, breaking her arm in the process. Sam is immediately treated as a hero for saving the President's life. When Sam is allowed to meet the President and the first family, she realizes why David looks so familiar: he is the son of the President. Sam's confusion about her relationship with Jack and David ensues. In her own mind, she loves Jack, but she is really falling for David...

There was no film to be based on the book, the controversy about the movie had started when the page "All-American Girl" was mistakenly posted in IMDb.com, which listed the cast " Raven-Symoné as Samantha and Drake Bell as David". Meg Cabot clearly stated in in her diary in her website "No, because there is not going to be a movie of “All-American Girl”. I currently hold the film rights. The way I can tell that I currently hold the film rights is that no one has paid me for them. I would know if someone had paid me for them, because there would be a lot more money in my bank account that there currently is." To see the full interview: http://www.megcabot.com/diary/?p=261

• A sequel, Ready Or Not was released in 2005.

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• - Meg Cabot's Official Website