CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices, 2005)
Hunter and Jen are so cool that by the time other kids start noticing what they’re doing and try to emulate it, Hunter and Jen are onto something else. Hunter has such a nose for the hip and trendy that he is actually paid by marketing companies for his opinion and predictions. His cell phone’s camera feature is always on standby as he snaps up pictures of “cool” for research in a book that is itself genuinely cool—fresh, original, inventive. The plot involves an intense mystery that pins Hunter and Jen in a race against both a giant, nameless but oh-so-familiar sneaker company named for a Greek goddess and an unknown group of activists who are trying to undermine cool culture in the name of individuality. Teens saturated in pop culture will love being on the inside with Hunter as he communicates in a perfectly understandable style while intentionally avoiding references to brand names. The appealing cover has tiny images, each a snapshot taken ostensibly by Hunter’s phone and explained more fully as the plot develops. In some over-the-top scenes, self-designated cool teen readers might feel uncomfortable at the fun Hunter pokes at trends and teen culture, and others might feel liberated by getting to know a character that is above and beyond mainstream high school norms. The amount of money that goes into creating and purchasing expensive consumer products that fulfill the perceived need for cool is staggering. Beneath the mystery, romance, and humor of this novel is biting social commentary. CCBC categories: Fiction for Young Adults. 2004, Razorbill, 225 pages, $16.99. Ages 13-17.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2004 (Vol. 72, No. 15))
This clever, quirky romp through New York City tackles the question: "What makes something cool?" Seventeen-year-old Hunter works for a famous shoe company spotting trends and taking part in focus groups. Three years earlier, having moved from Minnesota to Manhattan and finding himself an outsider, Hunter began to analyze and write a blog about the "billion coded messages being sent every day with clothes, hair, music, slang," which led to his job. When a radical group, out to undermine corporations, apparently kidnaps his boss, Mandy, Hunter and his adventurous friend and romantic interest Jen embark on a fast-paced, sometimes dangerous quest to rescue her. Unlike most realistic YA fiction, this one blends in interesting information as Hunter reflects on how trends spread and such unlikely topics as the popularity of certain names and the history of purple dye. While the plot occasionally requires a suspension of disbelief, the dialogue is snappy-and Hunter, whose anxiety underlies his need to be cool, is a charming narrator with an original take on teen life. 2004, Razorbill/Penguin, 256p, $16.99. Category: Fiction. Ages 12 up. Starred Review. © 2004 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Michele Winship (KLIATT Review, September 2004 (Vol. 38, No. 5))
Cool is cool, and what's cool today is tomorrow's old news. But who decides what's cool? Marketing executives? Big name celebrities? Or is cool created one unique shoelace tie at a time by Innovators who live outside the box? Just ask Hunter. He's a Trendsetter whose job is to determine "cool" and send it on down the line, through the Early Adopters, the Consumers, and finally the Laggards. Best of all, he gets paid for it as a "cool hunter" who works for "the client," a big-name company that specializes in athletic wear through Mandy, their marketing agent. Things get a little complicated when he discovers Jen, a true Innovator, and brings her to a "cool tasting" with the other Trendsetters. They stumble into a plot to bootleg the perfect shoe just when Mandy turns up missing, with only her cell phone left behind. Hunter and Jen set off to find Mandy, expose the bootleggers, and track down rogue cool hunters who are underground and working against the client and all things cool. So Yesterday is so today. Westerfeld has encapsulated today's cool in a fast-paced, fun novel that's not afraid to poke fun at our own consumerism while at the same time recognizing that cool rules. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JS--Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2004, Penguin, Razorbill, 246p., $16.99. Ages 12 to 18.

Jaime Hylton (The ALAN Review, Spring/Summer 2005 (Vol. 32, No. 3))
Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque works as a “cool spotter,” that is, he is paid by corporations to notice and report back what he predicts will be the next big trend. Occasionally he attends “cool tastings,” (known as “focus groups” yesterday). Hunter meets Jen when he asks to take a photograph (using his cell phone, of course) of the innovative way she has tied her shoelaces. He invites Jen to a cool tasting, and the mystery begins. Readers will enjoy challenging themselves to identify the most current cool products from Hunter’s descriptions of them (he refuses to do product placement-- naming brands--in his story). This clever novel is full of visual detail and would make an entertaining movie. Don’t delay in offering it to students, however, because it is saturated with the newest and the coolest and will not stay current very long. Westerfeld has built obsolescence right into his novel; soon it, too, will be “so yesterday.” Category: Pop-culture/Mystery. YA--Young Adult. 2004, Razorbill (Penguin Group), 225 pp., $16.99. Ages young adult.Scarborough, ME

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October 2004 (Vol. 58, No. 2))
The gleaming, nocturnal urban world of our cover is the milieu of the aptly named Hunter, who is a teen cool spotter, a consultant paid to advise companies--including one well-known sneaker company with a world-famous "swoosh" logo--on the trendiness of ads and products while always looking for new and exciting directions ("We have to observe carefully and push and prompt you in ways you don't notice. . . . It's not like you can just start making your own decisions, after all"). After he meets up with Jen, a disturbingly original thinker, the two find themselves drawn into a mystery when Mandy, the consultant who's Hunter's contact with the shoe company, goes missing, leaving behind only a pile of the most beautiful, most seductively cool sneakers ever manufactured--which are sporting a challenging anti-logo, the swoosh with a red circle and slash. As Hunter and Jen search for the apparently abducted Mandy, they uncover further signs of a brilliant and disruptive plot to infiltrate the glitzy world of cutting-edge marketing and undermine it with guerrilla action, satire, and parody, to "disrupt the sacred bond between brand and buyer." The tale is lively and quick paced, but it's secondary to the social commentary; Westerfeld tackles the merchantry of cool like no other YA author (except perhaps M. T. Anderson in Feed, BCCB 11/02, and Anderson's is, at least nominally, a futuristic vision), offering a witty and provocative investigation of the surrealistic world of marketing and status. There's food for thought aplenty in Hunter's crisp assessment of the various roles in the trend-marketing pyramid: Hunter is a Trendsetter, while Jen is that dangerous thing, an Innovator; there are also Early Adopters, Consumers, and Laggards ("They bravely tuck in their Kiss T-shirts and soldier on"). His tortuous analysis of the possibilities of the situation ("Or maybe," he says about the irresistible shoes, "these are supposed to look like bootlegs when they're not. And after these get too popular, which they will, the client will absorb the backlash and become cool again. Maybe they're ironic bootlegs") is absurd yet completely justified, a mad inspiration that may well become real life in our time. The book further teases its audience by salting the narration with commercial references but deliberately circumlocuting their instantly identifiable brand names, referring to the shoe manufacturer throughout as "the client" (and, therefore, to the subversive bootleggers--shoeleggers?--as the "anti-client"); there's also an array of sharply drawn characters plugged into cool from various directions--or hoping to be. What's particularly interesting is the book's shimmering ambiguity: there's cynicism aplenty here, which will appeal to quite a few readers, but there's also an understanding of the sheer glamour of marketing and the exhilaration of trendspotting. Jen the free spirit is as obsessed with the anti-client's sneakers as any mall rat is with the right brand name (she digs frantically through the ashes of the sneakers' funeral pyre, "looking for lost cool, the hardest thing to find"). The revolt is coolness itself, even surer than most revolutions to spawn eager conformity with its principles, more obliged than any to keep ahead of those who embrace it. Alert readers will also enjoy turning the implied questions on the text itself (is, for instance, the notion of cool as contrived as the notion of marketing it?), and there's plenty of diversion and provocation even at the manifest level, making this an alluring offering for both pursuers and scorners of cool. (Imprint information appears under Westerfeld's So Yesterday.) (Reviewed from galleys) Review Code: R* -- Denotes books of special distinction. (c) Copyright 2004, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2004, Razorbill/Penguin, 57p, $16.99. Grades 7-12.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2005)
Coolhunters" Hunter and Jen find themselves in trouble when they find a pair of running shoes that seem impossibly cool. In this market-research thriller, the shoes propel what is essentially a book-length chase scene assiduously annotated with much clever dialogue and thinking about why we want the things we do. Category: Older Fiction. 2004, Penguin/Razorbill, 229pp, 16.99. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.

Kim Carter (VOYA, October 2004 (Vol. 27, No. 4))
Seventeen-year-old Hunter is very good at what he does: hunt "cool." Hunter meets Jen when he notices her unique laces and asks permission to snap a picture with his hot cell phone. One thing leading to another, Jen accompanies Hunter to a focus group showing of a commercial, where she inexorably identifies herself as an Innovator. Before one can say "Trendsetter," Hunter and Jen are deeply embroiled in a power play between the marketing mavens of cool and counterculture, truly cool subversives. Refusing to deploy any brand names, Hunter nonetheless does an exceptional job of communicating to the sneaker company that employs him, along with the various other pop culture icons that vie for the minds-and pocketbooks-of America's youth. From Hunter's encyclopedic knowledge of "firsts"-the origin of the sneaker, the first detective novel, even the ancient move from earth tones to purple-to a deft presentation of the psychology of Innovators, Trendsetters, Early Adopters, Consumers, and Laggards, this book is one of those absolute gems that hooks the reader in an adventure story while embedding a wealth of fascinating information about how "cool" happens in society. Throw in some romance, witty first-person narration, and a plot full of surprises, and the result is one of the better young adult books this reviewer has read in years. A book that would be a blast to teach, this one deserves a widespread audience. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, Razorbill/Penguin, 256p., $16.99. Ages 12 to 18.

Shane Bell, Teen Reviewer (VOYA, October 2004 (Vol. 27, No. 4))
So Yesterday is a very interesting view of modern cool and the hunting thereof from the point of view of two teenagers, Jennifer (most popular name for the 1970s and 1980s) and Hunter (32nd most popular name for the same time frame). It offers a classic start to some sort of romantic comedy, but I assure you that this tale is instead an adventure story that takes place in a concrete jungle. I would recommend this book to any inquisitive soul who wants to know more about those people who are first to wear the five-inch platform shoes or have psychedelic hair, as well as those who follow in the wake of the innovation. I would also recommend it to anyone who just wants a good story that is set today and manages to describe a place as plastered with advertising as New York City without mentioning more than five products. This review was brought to you by the word "cool" and the Innovator Shane (75th most popular name for 1980-1990) Bell. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, Razorbill/Penguin, 256p., $16.99. Ages 12 to 18.