Material Girls presents an interesting future in which young adults are "tapped" from the age of 13 to be employed by companies in the creative industries. While the aspect of teen idols is quite similar to real life, there are also young teenagers selected to design video games or to determine which trendy fashions will be produced. The book jumps in with invented vocabulary for this somewhat dystopian world which I found a bit hard to follow at first. The structure of the creative application, selection, and employment unfolds throughout the book. As the tagline suggests, the story evolves into one of workers' rights. The book isn't that much of a page-turner, but it could tie into a larger unit of study related to 1) strikes/unions/revolutions, 2) choosing fields of study and applying for work, 3) fashion design and marketing, 4) working in creative industries, or 5) trends and self expression through fashion. Junior high students interested in fashion might get a kick out of it as an independent read as well. I'm interested to read author Elaine Dimopoulos's potential sequel about young men working in the video game industry.