You know I adore her writing. You know I consider her to be the High Priestess of YA.
The first time I read a Meg Cabot book must have been the end of 2000 or beginning of 2001. I was sick, and I’d had to leave college right before my last semester. My dear friend Jami B. mailed me a care package including The Princess Diaries and a pink plastic tiara.
I put on the tiara and read the book in one sitting. Mia Thermopolis enchanted me. A princess who doesn’t want to be a princess??? How could it get any better?
As time passed, I collected pretty much every single thing Meg has ever had published. The woman is a powerhouse. I don’t know how she does it, but she is unbelievably prolific, and her style is very much her own. She’s big on texture, which is my favorite thing about creative writing. She consistently serves up e-mails, instant messages, text messages, journal entries, receipts, even airline tickets. I wish more authors were good at the whole artifact thing, because it’s such a joy to be reading a book and stumble upon, I don’t know, a picture of a cat drawn onto a menu in Italian. (more…)