THE POPULARITY CODE

A middle schooler unintentionally becomes complicit in cyberbullying.

Seventh grader Faith already feels uncomfortable at school, caught between a former friend, Tierra, who knows about her coding skills, and her popular new friends, Janelle and Adria. Then SlamBook, a social media version of the old-fashioned comment book, goes viral, and Faith’s first-person narration, driven by dialogue, chronicles its dangerous effects. At first only a few classmates are targeted and the comments seem harmless. When the comments turn vicious, ranging from body-shaming to racist attacks against Adria’s Filipinx background, Faith uses her coding skills to identify the offenders. (Faith and her other friends seem to be white.) And when she discovers that her once-friendly classmates are posting scathing remarks about one another under the cover of anonymity, she feels compelled to post her own biting comments. It’s a deserved revenge, and no one will know, right? And it’s not really cyberbullying as a poster suggests—or is it? Faith’s wavering sense of her culpability is spot-on realistic, as is one student’s anonymous threat of suicide after too many attacks. While readers can glean many lessons about the perils of social media, Faris never crosses into preachy territory, grounding characters in the tough decisions facing young girls today. In addition to Adria, Faith’s Asian coding mentor, Ms. Wang, brings further racial diversity to the story and acts as a welcome female STEM role model.

Readers will find this look at social media habits eye-opening and accessible.