'The Clique': Chick-lit For Teens and Tweens

We visited Harrison in her office near her home in Laguna Beach to talk to her about this phenomenon -- and what it means for kids.

(ABC News Photo Illustration)

"It's fantasy. It's aspirational. I, being the person that never got to wear designer clothes growing up, as most girls in the country can't," Harrison said. "It's 'Oh, my God. What would it feel like to do that?' Dare to dream. It's like, you know, saying 'Harry Potter is not real, but wouldn't we all love to be magic and be able to do magic?' It's that same thing."

Harrison said all the references to designer clothing and materialism was intended to be completely satirical.

"I am pointing out something in our culture that I think is actually very unhealthy," she said. "To the point of it being funny. I mean, I truly think that the obsession with this stuff is so over the top and so crazy, that, to me, it's funny, and I think the readers get it. I mean, I drop 50 brand names in a couple of chapters and it's the point of insanity."

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Whatever her intention, Harrison's books touch a nerve -- a raw nerve -- for middle-school girls.

With worries about clothes, weight, boys, money and school, to name a few, these children are under a lot of pressure.

"It's out there. I don't like it, but it's a fact," Harrison said. "It'd be great if one of them could go, 'Yeah, that is really terrible about our society and I don't want to go down that road.' This is the age when they're all so impressionable, but they are also so aware. I think, by 12, it's already too late. So, I'm not going to write a gosh, golly book just to pretend that this stuff doesn't exist."

It exists - - those toxic pressures to conform, to run with the in crowd -- not just in kids' lives, but in Harrison's too.

She says she gets her material from her world -- the adult world.

What those girls are feeling, their emotions, are no different from what an adult feels, she said.

"I've just taken those feelings and that longing to fit in, that need to be accepted and loved, that need to be seen as smart and attractive, and viable and important, and just dressed them up in smaller, more expensive clothes," Harrison said with a laugh.