Obviously, I'm in the Wrong Line of Work...

...or at least trying to go at it the wrong way!
From Publisher's Lunch:

Gaby Rodriguez's untitled memoir about her experience faking a pregnancy for 6 1/2 months as a high school senior to determine the sterotypes of unwed teen mothers, unveiling the results at a student assembly weeks before graduation, to Zareen Jaffrey at Simon & Schuster Children's, in a pre-empt, for publication in early 2012, by Sharlene Martin at Martin Literary Management (NA).
Foreign rights: Taryn Fagerness Agency

Now, lemme get this straight.
This girl perpetrates a fraud on her high school, on her friends, on heaven knows who else. Then retroactively (is anyone actually doubting this?) decides it had a Great Social Purpose, and that purpose will be to (of course) point the finger at those people around her who no doubt "judged" her unjustly (meaning they probably gave her some impression along the way of "how could you be so stupid?", which would be entirely justified), and Incriminate Us All Yet Again For Being Pigheaded Closedmineded People...

...and she not only isn't kicked out of school, but she's given a book contract in a pre-empt?

The only people stupider than her high school for allowing this and spotlighting it in an assembly are the publishers and agents who lined up to get this project. And get this: it's going to be in the children's book end of the business.

Yeah, that warms the cockles of my  heart. I'll bet it does yours, too.

A year after this book comes out, there'll be a rash of kids faking all kinds of things with the intent of getting book contracts out of them--or, actually, in attempts to get the money for the books out of them, since there's no way in hell this kid's writing this book entirely herself--and sociologists, school psychologists, and YA experts will all be frowning earnestly and Wondering Why this has become some sort of odd trend.

Someone needs to go back to Child Psychology 101 and do a refresher course, methinks. You know--the part about "If you reward bad behavior with attention, it will continue"?

Yeah, that part.
But...never mind. That was clearly wasted on you the first time you read it.

So it's clear I've completely missed the boat.
I need to go find a fraud to perpetrate. Obviously, writing great stories and sending them out to these places doesn't get attention...but perpetrating a fraud, and then dropping the word "memoir" out there to tell everyone about it, does.
Silly me.
I'll do better from now on.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Don't we live in a GREAT publishing country?

Janny