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The Agony of Alice (Alice, Bk 1)
The Agony of Alice - Alice, Bk 1
Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Life, Alice McKinley feels, is just one big embarrassment. Here she is, about to be a teenager and she doesn't know how. It's worse for her than for anyone else, she believes, because she has no role model. Her mother has been dead for years. Help and advice can only come from her father, manager of a music store, and her nineteen-year-o...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780689311437
ISBN-10: 0689311435
Publication Date: 9/1/1985
Pages: 144
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Rating:
  • Currently 4.4/5 Stars.
 5

4.4 stars, based on 5 ratings
Publisher: Atheneum
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review
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skywriter319 avatar reviewed The Agony of Alice (Alice, Bk 1) on + 784 more book reviews
Alice is motherless, and going into her new school's sixth grade. 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.

Instead, she gets stuck in Mrs. Plotkin's class. Mrs. Plotkin is dumpy and has no physical attributes to her name. 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. Like how she is rude to Mrs. Plotkin in an effort to get transferred to Miss Cole's class. Or when she wears too much perfume to try to emulate Miss Cole. 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.

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?

This is the beginning of a marvelously realistic series about a girl going through puberty, social changes, love, family, and friendship. Alice is sweetly vulnerable yet lovingly feisty, a girl caught in the web on the way to being a teenager. Every girl will be able to relate to Alice on some level.
reviewed The Agony of Alice (Alice, Bk 1) on + 38 more book reviews
This is easily one of my favorite books in the Alice series. Alice is still figureing out a lot of things in this book, and without a mother. This is the first in the Alice series, not counting the prequals, which are not that good....although "Alice in Blunderland" is written well.


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