Synopses & Reviews
After her first day in junior high, Alice McKinley says, "I can think of at least seven things about seventh grade that stink." But after a week, Alice has decided that maybe junior high isn't so bad. In fact, maybe she can go a whole year being friends with everyone, teachers and students alike. This is before she has her first run-in with Denise "Mack-Truck" Whitlock.
Alice, who has survived sixth grade and The Summer of the First Boyfriend, soon discovers that it isn't so easy to be Alice the Likeable. Even her best friends get in the way sometimes. And just when she is sure no one has more problems than she does, she is drawn into the ones her twenty-year-old brother and her widowed father are facing, which seem worse. Thinking a favorite teacher may hold the answer to at least one difficulty, Alice ends up with a bigger mess than ever.
She realizes, however, that it is possible to overcome disaster and to find a way out of troubles. Most of all, she discovers, it's good to have a father and a brother who love you and look out for you. In fact, sometimes, having family is almost enough.
About the Author
Phyllis Reynolds NaylorPHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR remembers seventh grade for her struggles with mathematics, the wall kick and the frog stand in gym, frying liver in home economics, and embarrassing herself on stage. As a mother, she has suffered through seventh grade with both of her sons, now grown, but enjoys going back to junior highs and middle schools to talk about her books and to see how things have changed.About her Alice books, Phyllis Naylor says, "If I had known there would be a sequel to
The Agony of Alice, and then another and another, I would have started Alice in the third grade." She plans to take Alice up to her eighteenth year before she stops the series and already knows how the last book will end.
She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with her husband, Rex, and is the author of more than sixty books, including The Agony of Alice; Alice in Rapture, Sort of; Night Cry; The Solomon System; and The Keeper.