Alice In-Between

Thirteen! It's finally happening. Alice McKinley is an actual, official teenager. But the problem is, she still sort of feels like a kid. Wasn't being a teenager supposed to feel different? Turning thirteen happens overnight, but the teenager stuff takes time—and a little more patience than Alice has at the moment!

Still, being thirteen does have its advantages, she decides. Alice is allowed to do more exciting things, like take a trip to Chicago with her two best friends. And when she takes a good look at all the relationship problems her older brother has, she realizes that in-between can sometimes be the perfect place.

When motherless Alice turns thirteen she feels in-between, no longer a child but not yet a woman, and discovers that growing up can be both frustrating and wonderful.

In between, that's what Alice decides she is. During the spring of seventh grade and the summer that follows, she feels she is neither child nor woman, and waits, not so patiently, for beauty to blossom.

As she turns 13 and her older brother, Lester, takes her out on the town, some almost grown-up things happen to her, but there are unexpected dangers attached. And a marvelous trip to Chicago with her best friends, Pamela and Elizabeth, proves that "in-between" may not be such a bad place to be after all, when Pamela, acting too old for her age, attracts some unwanted attention, and Elizabeth promptly goes into shock. And when Patrick comes back into Alice's life again, she realizes she doesn't have to rush things.

Being 13 has its advantages, she decides. Taking the pencil test, buying a hermit crab, and taking part in long conversations about life and sex are all a part of her world now. Alice is glad that the first seven grades are over with and she's a teenager at last, but she's also happy she does not yet have to face some of the problems -- mostly with girls -- that her brother faces, or even her father. For anyone who is in-between (and who isn't?) Alice in-Between is a book to savor.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-7-The perennial heroine of five Naylor novels is back in a droll tale of early adolescent pluck, curiosity, and angst. Motherless since early childhood, Alice finds turning 13 a time of awkward transition from girlhood to womanhood, a topic she never hesitates to discuss frankly with her father and older brother, Lester. The highlight of her summer is a visit with best friends Pamela and Elizabeth to her Aunt Sally's home in Chicago. The girls travel without a chaperone, enjoying the sophistication of an overnight train trip in a sleeper car. Pamela is comely and deceptively mature-looking, and when she attracts the persistent attention of an older man, Elizabeth and Alice boldly and humorously stage her rescue. A sober touch is provided when Mrs. Plotkin, Alice's beloved sixth grade teacher and surrogate mother, has a heart attack and is hospitalized. By summer's end, Alice is beginning to feel more in control of her fledgling maturation as she renews her special friendship with old flame Patrick. This is bound to reassure the many adolescent fans who can identify with the ``in-between blues.''-Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor includes many of her own growing-up experiences in the Alice books. She writes for both children and adults and is the author of more than one hundred and thirty-five books, including the Alice series, which Entertainment Weekly has called "tender" and "wonderful." In 1992 her novel Shiloh won the Newbery Medal. She lives with her husband, Rex, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Visit Phyllis online at alicemckinley.wordpress.com