In the world of the "A-List" or "Clique" girl, inverting Austen (and Alcott), the rich are right and good simply by virtue of their wealth. Seventh graders have Palm Pilots, red Coach clutches, Visas and cellphones in Prada messenger bags. Success and failure are entirely signaled by material possessions -- specifically, by brands. You know the new girl in the "Clique" novel "Best Friends for Never" is living in social limbo when she shops at J. Crew and wears Keds, and her mother drives a dreaded Taurus rather than a Lexus. In "Back in Black" the group of "A-List" teenagers spends a weekend at "the Palms Hotel and Casino"; brands are so prominent you wonder if there are product placement deals: "Vanity Fair always prepared giveaway baskets. . . . Last year's had contained a Dell portable jukebox, a bottle of Angel perfume by Thierry Mugler and a PalmOne Treo 600 Smartphone." (The copyright page of the latest "Gossip Girl" book lists credits for the clothing featured on the cover: "gold sequined top -- Iris Singer, peach dress -- Bibelot@Susan Greenstadt," and so on.)

In these novels, the world of wealthy parents is characteristically seen as corrupt and opportunistic -- but the kids have no problem with that. In the "A-List" novels, power is all about favors: "Orlando Bloom was next door with Jude Law, and Sam knew him from a dinner party her father had hosted to raise money for the Kerry campaign." As Anna challenges a young would-be writer, Scott, "Do you think you only got published in The Times because your mother called in a favor?"

The mockery the books direct toward their subjects is not the subversion of adult convention traditionally found in young adult novels. Instead they scorn anyone who is pathetic enough not to fit in. In the "Clique" novels, the "pretty committee," dominated by the lead bitch-goddess, Massie, is made up of the cool kids of their elite girls school. They terrorize the "losers" below them in the social hierarchy: it's like "Lord of the Flies" set in the local mall, without the moral revulsion.

The girls move through the school in what has become, in movies like "Mean Girls" and "Clueless," a set piece for nasty cool-girl drama: they are "striking and confident in their matching costumes . . . like a gang of sexy fembots on a mission to take over suburbia." In the classic tradition of young adult fiction, Massie would be the villain, and Claire, the newcomer who first appears as an L.B.R., or "Loser Beyond Repair," would be the heroine: she is the one girl with spunk, curiosity and age-appropriate preoccupations. Claire and her family live in the guesthouse of the wealthy Block family; Claire's mother is friends with Massie's mother, but her father seems to be employed by Massie's father in an uneasily dependent relationship. In Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë, that economic dependency on the "great house" would signal that the heroine stands in opposition to the values of that mansion. Yet Claire's whole journey, in class terms, is to gravitate into the mansion. She abandons her world of innocence and integrity -- in which children respect parents, are honest and like candy -- to embrace her eventual success as one of the school's elite, lying to and manipulating parents, having contempt for teachers and humiliating social rivals.

Over the course of the series, Claire learns to value her own poorer but closer-knit family less than she did before. Indeed, she pushes her father into greater economic dependence on the rich patrons, absorbing Massie's shopping tastes and learning to disdain her mother's clothing. Veronica and Betty morph into mistresses of the universe, wearing underwear to school with the words "kiss it" on the rear.

Since women have been writing for and about girls, the core of the tradition has been the opposition between the rebel and the popular, often wealthy antiheroine. Sara Crewe in Frances Hodgson Burnett's "Little Princess" loses her social standing and is tormented by the school's alpha girls, but by the end of the story we see them brought low. In "Little Women," Jo March's criticism of "ladylike" social norms is challenged by an invitation to a ball; while Meg, the eldest girl, is taken in by the wealthy daughters of the house and given a makeover -- which is meant to reveal not her victory as a character but her weakness.

This tradition carried on powerfully through the 20th century. Even modern remakes, like "Clueless," show the popular, superficial girl undergoing a humbling and an awakening, as she begins to question her allegiance to conformity and status.