Sex and the City goes to high school

When you hear "Carrie Bradshaw," you probably picture Sarah Jessica Parker parading down a New York street in a pair of Manolos and a crazy-fashionable dress. But maybe it's time to flash back to the sweater-vested, bespectacled Parker from the television series "Square Pegs" -- because a new Carrie Bradshaw is coming: the high school version.

Author Candace Bushnell, who wrote the original "Sex and the City" column for the New York Observer -- which, just like in the TV show, later became a book -- will pen a new Carrie Bradshaw novel for young adults (Variety reports there will be two). The tentative title is "The Carrie Diaries."

The NY Observer talked to two editors involved with the project, digging for details. "It hasn’t all been resolved yet," editor Donna Bray told the paper. "I think she'll come here [to Manhattan] the way Candace did, with her friends, to hang out in the city on the weekend, and have a lot of social interaction there, and then eventually she’ll come to college here, as Candace did."

Will the teenage Carrie have a core group of good girlfriends, as the adult Carrie did? Will the teenage Carrie be as spiffy a fashionista? What will her parents be like -- did we ever glimpse them on the show? Will she have to go to gym? Will she be a cheerleader? Work on the school paper?

These were not the questions the Observer recorded asking. They went straight for the sex:

Asked if Ms. Bushnell was planning to write about Carrie losing her virginity, Ms. Balzer and Ms. Bray said they weren’t sure. Pub Crawl checked it out, though, and there’s a story for the telling. If the universe of the books is consistent with the universe of the show — and it very well may not be — readers should anticipate a scene featuring an 11th-grade Carrie sharing "half a joint" with one Seth Bateman and then doing it with him on the Ping-Pong table in his "smelly rec room." At least this is how Carrie describes her origin story to Charlotte in episode 38, "The Big Time."

Sounds like she was a little cooler than "Square Pegs'" Patty Greene -- but not much.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Sante D'Orazio / HBO