the agony of alice by phyllis reynolds naylor

Every girl will be able to relate to Alice on some level.In the world of children’s literature (and in recent years also YA), one name is mentioned above all others: Alice.

Alice is sweetly vulnerable yet lovingly feisty, a girl caught in the web on the way to being a teenager. This is the beginning of a marvelously realistic series about a girl going through puberty, social changes, love, family, and friendship. Will the humiliations ever end? Or will Alice just learn to accept the good with the bad, and thus begin to grow up as a result? Or when she walks in on a boy in his dressing room, only for him to turn out to be Patrick, the safety patrol in her class. Or when she wears too much perfume to try to emulate Miss Cole. Plotkin in an effort to get transferred to Miss Cole's class. Alice can't believe her luckâ¦until it gets worse! When she tries to fit in, it seems as though she's humiliating herself instead. Plotkin is dumpy and has no physical attributes to her name. She desperately wants to fit in and act more grown up, but without a mother, how does she know how to go about it? She decides that the best way to do this is to be in the sixth grade class of Miss Cole, the beautiful and graceful lady she wants to emulate. « lessĪlice is motherless, and going into her new school's sixth grade. Alice moves on, ready to be a wise teenager. Out of all this, to her amazement, comes a role model - one that she would never have accepted before she made a few very important discoveries on her own, things no roadmap could have shown her. And she meets an aunt and a female cousin whom she has not really known before. She also comes to know the lovely Miss Cole, as well as Mrs. Through the school year, Alice has lots to record. Alice calls hers 'The Agony of Alice,' and in it she records all the embarrassing things that happen to her. Plotkin's first assignments is for each member of the class to keep a journal of their thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately, she draws the homely, pear-shaped Mrs. If only she finds herself, when school begins, in the classroom of the beautiful sixth-grade teacher, Miss Cole, her troubles will be over. What she needs, Alice decides, is a gorgeous woman who does everything right, as a roadmap, so to speak. What do they know about being a teen age girl? Help and advice can only come from her father, manager of a music store, and her nineteen-year-o. It's worse for her than for anyone else, she believes, because she has no role model. Here she is, about to be a teenager and she doesn't know how.

Life, Alice McKinley feels, is just one big embarrassment.

The agony of alice by phyllis reynolds naylor