By: Javonna May-Mons; Star-Telegram Staff Writer


Galleria, Dorinda, Chanel, Anginette and Aquanette are five high school friends on a mission to make big bucks in the music industry. Just like millions of teen-agers - girls and boys - they write catchy songs, dance and sing to their own tunes. But, as members of the singing group The Cheetah Girls, these five girls are well-prepared to get jiggy in the jiggy jungle - also known as the streets of New York.

In case you're wondering, The Cheetah Girls is a fictitious group, but the spirit is quite real. New children's author Deborah Gregory is at the helm of this preteen series.

While series like the Babysitters Club and the Nancy Drew books have served the preteen market for years, one group was forgotten: minorities. Luckily, Jump at the Sun, a Disney subsidiary, didn't approach Gregory with your run-of-the-mill, preteen concept, which usually consists of white characters who don't cross color boundaries.

"It made me sad that there was a void," says Gregory during a recent stop in the Metroplex while on a national promotional tour. "When I was growing up there was a void, but I thought that had changed."

Standing about 6 feet tall and decked out in head-to-toe leopard print (from her shoes to the small, plush leopard in her hair) Gregory, with her cheetah-girl, "growl power" language, is the ultimate diva. During an interview at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, she performed just like a character out of her books, full of fun and hip flair.

It's just this flair that attracted the Jump at the Sun crew. After seeing Gregory, a contributing writer for Essence magazine, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a Jump at the Sun editor contacted her in hopes that she could bring its preteen series idea to fruition.

Jump at the Sun wanted a book about five girls who come together and start a singing group. Gregory says she had never previously considered writing children's books, but happily agreed to give it a try. She racked her brain for a concept before finally deciding to go with what she knows.

"I created this whole universe based on my concept about modern-day life being parallel to the real jungle," she says. "I made up some of the words, and others are already making the pop culture rounds in certain cliques. Creating new words has always been my thing, but each generation of the 'kiddie nation' has created their own buzzwords."

Aside from jungle metaphors and a creative vocabulary, Gregory gives minorities a positive representation of themselves. That's not usually done, says Gregory.

"Growing up, I read the most winky-dinky books," she says. "You know, like The Adventures of Pickle Peter on the Prairie - the kind of nonsense that had nothing to do with my reality, my growing pains and my world. I want to blur the racial lines, so that white girls will think that black girls are cool. And black girls will think they're cool because they're seeing themselves in a book. That was a very big thing for me growing up."

Gregory hopes that her books will help young black girls overcome common insecurities caused by seeing few positive representations of themselves in the media. Throughout her childhood, Gregory faced feelings of inadequacy and awkwardness, she says.

"I wanted to be white growing up," says Gregory. "I didn't even know that, but unconsciously, of course I would. Why wouldn't I want to be white? They had everything."

But while keeping it positive, Gregory says she didn't want to stray from reality. She didn't want to give kids a watered-down version of the world; kids are much sharper than that, says Gregory.

And Gregory has kept her promise and more. Instead of making The Cheetah Girls a "black girls only" club, Gregory incorporates other minorities as well. The group's members are a cultural soup of black, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Cuban heritages.

Like most authors, Gregory splashes a bit of her life onto the pages of her novels. Cheetah Girl Dorinda Rogers, a foster child, most closely resembles Gregory, who grew up in the New York City foster-care system and left it at age 18.

"Absolutely I knew that one of the girls would be a foster child, that goes without saying," says Gregory. "Dorinda represents the 600,000 foster children living in America today. These kids need a voice."

The Cheetah Girls isn't stopping with its red-hot book success. The series is soon to be a television special produced by Whitney Houston's Brownhouse Productions.

"It's very important to me that the edgy Cheetah-licious elements of the characters are transferred to the screen," says Gregory. "More importantly, The Cheetah Girls are going to be a real singing group."

The girls, who will be found in a nationwide search, will also have a record deal. Part of the search will be conducted in malls across the country, with plans for Whitney Houston to be at the finals.

Gregory, who resides in Manhattan, wants The Cheetah Girls to make an impact on paper and on the tube. With snappy, vibrant characters and the teen music dream, she plans to entertain and teach at the same time - all through a safari adventure in the jiggy jungle.

"The jiggy jungle is the magical, 'Cheeta-licious' place that exists inside of every dangerous, scary, crowded city," she says. "And as recent events in the suburbs have shown us, the danger is everywhere. True Cheetah Girls have the skills to access their power, because no matter how you slice it, girls must be prepared for life in the urban/suburban jungle."