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Summary
Summary
Alice has decided she needs priorities in her life -- and the first is to get her favorite teacher, Miss Summers, to marry her father. The only problem is that the vice principal, Mr. Sorringer, wants to marry Miss Summers too, and Miss Summers seems to be having trouble making up her mind.How can someone be in love with two people at the same time? It doesn't make sense to Alice -- until Sam, her friend from Camera Club, starts to pay attention to her. Sam is quiet and gentle, and a terrific dancer -- Alice likes being with him. But Alice has been Patrick's girlfriend for almost two years -- so why is she interested in another guy?
Author Notes
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana on January 4, 1933. She received a bachelor's degree from American University in 1963. Her first children's book, The Galloping Goat and Other Stories, was published in 1965. She has written more than 135 children and young adult books including Witch's Sister, The Witch Returns, The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel, A String of Chances, The Keeper, Walker's Crossing, Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry, Please Do Feed the Bears, and The Agony of Alice, which was the first book in the Alice series. She has received several awards including the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Night Cry and the Newberry Award for Shiloh.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Horn Book Review
In the tenth book in this series, thirteen-year-old Alice and her friends try to puzzle out the often confounding rules of womanhood, discuss boys and sex, and get the lowdown on pelvic exams. Learning that life and love are full of changes--no matter how well you try to plan things--Alice continues to be a refreshingly honest character with poignantly realistic adolescent highs and lows. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Readers who have, with Alice, been waiting impatiently for her widowed father and favorite teacher, Miss Summers, to pick a date will have to wait some more; the Alice series (Outrageously Alice, 1997, etc.) continues to feature comic twists, comfortably familiar characters who still have surprises to reveal, and a plot that includes some serious issues. As she tries to decide whether to stick with boyfriend Patrick or play the field, Alice accompanies Elizabeth on her first visit to a gynecologist and gets an earful afterward, goes from the high of having Miss Summers over for Christmas to the low of hearing that she spent New Year's Eve with another man, ruminates about topics as diverse as masturbation and careers, participates in a class project designed to analyze deceptive TV commercials, and struggles to cope with Miss Summers's devastating announcement that she'll be spending the next year in England as part of a teacher exchange. Naylor continues to usher Alice, and readers, toward adolescence with this well-knit, frequently hilarious story, cemented with buckets full of information, reassurance, and common sense. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6-8. At a time of bleak realism in YA fiction, it's great to also have a book that makes you laugh out loud about a young teenager's struggle to grow up. Not that the issues aren't serious. In eighth grade now, Alice grapples with lies, loss, loyalty, and sexual awakening, even as she worries about what to wear to the school Valentine's Day dance. She is still obsessed with getting her widowed father to marry her gorgeous ex-teacher. Like her readers, Alice wants to talk to someone about her body and her sexuality. Does everyone masturbate? What is it like to have a pelvic exam? (Deliberately outrageous, she tells her father and brother at the dinner table about the three things that the doctor says can cause wetness "down there.") Is it all right to feel "wet and tingly" when her boyfriend Patrick kisses her? As always, the adults in her life are nearly all sympathetic, gentle, and funny. Her older brother, Lester, has the best lines, both wry and wise. When he tells her that she will get through a tough time--whether it's a bad hair day or the loss of someone she loves--she knows he is right. This tenth book in a great series reads more like a stop along the way than a complete novel, but Alice's fans will love it and wait for the next one. (Reviewed April 1, 1998)0689803559Hazel Rochman
