The Sage Informer

This year the journalism staff announced the yearbook theme as a Mean Girls “Burn Book” styled yearbook but with a twist. They are making big adaptations to the “Burn Book” to give it a positive spin. Instead of tearing people down, their goal is to build people up.

Mean Girls is a teen movie that follows the main character, Cady, through her American high school experience. In the movie, there is a lot of emphasis on the cliques that naturally form during high school. Regina George, a stereotypical “popular girl” in the movie, and her friends made a Burn Book of people they don’t favor and said nasty things about them. Monticello’s journalism editors, Emma Hillard and Taylor Dyer took this idea and adapted it into making a book that says positive things about people. 

Lisa Nuku, the Journalism Advisor explained their intentions with this year’s yearbook and said, “We have been really intentional about this and how those things [cliques] exist at the highschool level all the time. They change overtime through different generations and years, but I feel like we can do things to make our school culture better. I think Monticello is really good about that and especially with such a serious focus on mental health and taking care of each other, which is something our community does well. I think that we have established that as our primary focus.”

This yearbook is probably one of the most creative yearbooks that will ever come out of Monticello. Nuku mentioned, “Our cover has little kisses, and we had a whole journey trying to find the right color of pink and little burned edges. It is definitely adapting a lot of the same ideas.” 

Plus this will be very popular among our high school students. Seeing this book come to life in a beneficial and worthwhile way will spark many kids to purchase it. Hillard said, “We have been promoting it a lot more. We posted the cover on social media and got good feedback. Kendall Eades has been putting posters around the school, promoting it. I think it will sell really well because it was very popular when most of our parents were growing up, and I think they will be excited to see a movie turn into a yearbook. Also it has always been a popular movie among my generation.”

Liliana Tirey, Staff Writer

tirli25@sages.us