Alice on the Outside

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Naylor

Published 1 October 2000
Alice likes her life, but she senses things are changing. She is getting bored by her best friends Elizabeth and Pamela's constant chatter about clothes and make-up, and sometimes she feels excluded from their conversations. Her relationship with Patrick is becoming more complicated, too. From her cousin Carol, Alice learns that there are no easy answers to some of her questions about life. Then a school experiment and a new friend with a painful secret reveal some unsettling truths about the world Alice lives in and she has to face up to the issue of prejudice. Growing up is even trickier than Alice thought - is she ready for the challenge? Issues of sexuality, tolerance and self-knowledge are dealt with candidly in this 11th book about Alice McKinley.

Reluctantly Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 30 March 1991
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.


Alice is in the eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.


Starting with Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 September 2002
After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.

Lovingly Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 January 2004
Fifth grade is tumultuous for Alice as she tries to help others through the many changes occurring at home and in school, including learning about sex when Rosalind gets her period and shares a book that explains what is happening.

Achingly Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 June 1998
Thirteen-year-old Alice sets long- and short-term priorities for her life as she experiences the complexities of young love.

It's the moment Alice has been looking forward to for years--her sixteenth birthday is coming up, and that means getting her driver's license, with the freedom that entails. And before that important milestone, there's another delicious taste of freedom awaiting Alice and her friends--a class trip to New York City, promising some serious partying once chaperones have gone to bed. But sophomore year and driving lessons are a lot harder than Alice thought they would be, and then there's the problem with her new boyfriend, who is sometimes too attached to her. The older Alice gets, the more complicated her life seems to become.

Alice in Blunderland

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 26 September 2003
Fourth-grader Alice tries unsuccessfully to avoid embarrassing mistakes and to establish better relations with her older brother Lester.

All But Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 January 1992
There are, Alice decides, 272 horrible things left to happen to her in her life, based on the number of really horrible things that have happened already. She figures that out after the disaster of the talent show. And she realizes that there is no way to fend them off.

But, she reasons, if you don't have a mother, maybe a sister would help. Maybe lots of sisters, a worldwide sisterhood. Be like everyone else, do what others do, and best of all, be part of the "in" group. Then you have sympathy and protection.

It is with this in mind that Alice joins the All-Stars Fan Club and the earring club and becomes one of the Famous Eight. It helps, even when it's a bit boring. On the whole, Alice thinks, she is enjoying seventh grade more than she had ever expected.

Yet Sisterhood, even Famous Eighthood, does not take care of all of her problems or answer all of her questions about life and love. Can she be Sisters with all three girls who want to be her brother Lester's girlfriends? How does she treat the fact that her father is dating her teacher, Miss Summers? How do you accept a box of valentine candy from a boy? In fact, how do boys fit into Universal Sisterhood -- or is there a Universal Humanhood? How far do you go when being part of the crowd means doing something you don't want to do?

As in the earlier Alice books, Alice copes with life in her own way, and her answers to her endless problems are often funny and surprisingly right.


Alice in April

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 30 April 1993
"April is the cruelest month", said the poet, and Alice McKinley would agree. April is a hard month. Not that she doesn't have some fun. It does begin with a wonderful April Fool's Day joke on her brother, Lester. But it also begins with Aunt Sally reminding her that she will soon be thirteen (as if anyone could forget something so important) and then she will be Woman of the House, since her mother is long dead. It is an awesome responsibility. All her life she had assumed that her father and Lester were there to take care of her; now she is going to have to take care of them. Taking care of Lester, alone, could be a full-time job, she thinks. Being Woman of the House has all sorts of drawbacks. For example: It never occurred to her that when she suggested her father and Lester ought to have physical checkups, her father would insist that she have one too. How could you let a doctor see you naked?

Of course, Alice is still in school. And there she faces another crisis. She might be Woman of the House at home, but in school she needs a different kind of name, one given by a table full of boys in the cafeteria Depending on their figures, girls are being given state names-- some states have mountains and others do not. Will flat, flat Delaware or Louisiana be her fate? Alice lives in fear that it might be, though even worse is the fear that she might not get a name at all.

The month ends with a dinner party for her father's birthday (part of being Woman of the House) that has more downs than ups-- and with a totally unexpected event that makes Alice and everyone she knows grow up a little and wonder a little deeper about life and the future. April is a hard month, but reading about "Alice in April" is to find that most tragedies (though not all) pass and tears can turn to laughter and delight.


Agony of Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 September 1985
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-old brother, who is a slob. What do they know about being a teen age girl?

What she needs, Alice decides, is a gorgeous woman who does everything right, as a roadmap, so to speak. If only she finds herself, when school begins, in the classroom of the beautiful sixth-grade teacher, Miss Cole, her troubles will be over. Unfortunately, she draws the homely, pear-shaped Mrs. Plotkin. One of Mrs. Plotkin's first assignments is for each member of the class to keep a journal of their thoughts and feelings. Alice calls hers "The Agony of Alice, " and in it she records all the embarrassing things that happen to her.

Through the school year, Alice has lots to record. She also comes to know the lovely Miss Cole, as well as Mrs. Plotkin. And she meets an aunt and a female cousin whom she has not really known before. 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. Alice moves on, ready to be a wise teenager.


Simply Alice

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 May 2002
It isn't Alice and Patrick anymore; it's simply Alice, and much to her surprise, Alice is finding that's okay. In fact, between working on the school play, and becoming more involved with the newspaper, Alice is so busy that she doesn't have much time to pine for Patrick, or for her best friends Pamela and Elizabeth - and they resent it. And if Alice ever needed friends, she needs them now. She's got a secret e-mail admirer she's not sure how to handle. Her brother, Lester, is plunging headlong into a risky romance with a professor. And her new friend, Faith, seems unable to break free of an abusive relationship with her boyfriend. It's not simple being simply Alice.

Come and meet Alice. Here she is on the brink of being a teenager and discovering that life is just one big embarrassment. Things are not made any easier by the fact that she has no female role model - Alice's mother died when she was four - so there is just her father and older brother - and what could they possibly know about being a girl and growing up? Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's lively, witty style, mixed with poignance and perception, has captured the essence of adolescent anxieties as we follow Alice through the trials and tribulations of growing up. It's August, and the whole gang is having a terrific time, hanging out at Mark Stedmeister's swimming pool - except Alice, who has a secret even from her best friends Pamela and Elizabeth. Alice is deathly afraid of deep water, and just as afraid of what will happen if her secret gets out. When disaster strikes, it's even worse than Alice imagined. How can she face her friends? And how can she face her boyfriend, Patrick, who's coming home from summer holiday and looking forward to joining the eighth grade swimming team with Alice?

Alice and her friends, Pamela and Elizabeth, are looking forward to the most exciting summer of their lives. To get into shape for the new school year they jog three miles a day and Alice is enjoying her volunteer job at the local hospital. But things keep happening that Alice hadn't counted on. Her satisfaction with her job is marred by an unexpected sorrow. Her attempt to be a loyal friend to Pamela gets her in trouble with her father and brother, big time. And both she and Pamela are afraid that Elizabeth may be taking her efforts to lose weight too seriously. Could the most exciting summer of their lives be a little too exciting?

Alice Alone

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 May 2001
Alice's first year in high school gets off to a difficult start when she and her boyfriend Patrick break up, but with the help of her father, older brother, and best friends, she gains a better sense of her own self-worth.

After four years of hoping, wishing, scheming, and waiting, the moment Alice has been yearning for has at long last arrived....Alice's dad is finally marrying Sylvia Summers! Alice always knew they were perfect for each other when she set them up back in seventh grade, but she's relieved that The Big Day is here. She's never felt so excited, so vindicated, so grown-up, and so...well, so left out. Now that the wedding is really happening, no one has time for Alice anymore, and the situation just gets worse when Sylvia moves into their house. Nothing is the way Alice thought it would be. Her dad and Sylvia have their new life together; Lester has his new apartment; and Alice feels like she's on her own for the first time in her life.

She's also starting to notice that even though Dad and Sylvia are perfectly happy together, not everyone gets along so well. Elizabeth and Ross never see each other; Leslie and Lori are breaking up; Pamela and her mother can't seem to find a way to even talk to each other; and Alice herself has started to hear some surprising rumors about Patrick....

As Alice watches her friends sort out their problems and sees her dad and Sylvia navigate their new marriage, she starts to understand all the hard work that goes into relationships and how even when people seem to be meant for each other, it's not always easy to be together.


Alice in the Know

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Published 1 August 2006
Alice fills the summer before her junior year of high school with a job at the mall, hanging out with her friends, and wishing she had a bigger family.

Alice has always tried to be a decent person. She gets good grades, comes home on time, and has never really given her dad and her stepmom any reason to worry. But now that junior year of high school has started, Alice is a little sick of people assuming she's a goody-goody, so she decides to start shaking things up. First there are the dates with Tony, a cute senior who's a lot more experienced than Alice. Then the fights with her stepmom about the new cat, the car, and everything else start. But when Alice sneaks off to a party that her parents don't know about and a near-tragedy follows, she starts to realize every choice has a consequence, and danger rarely leads to good ones.

Funny, realistic, and always provocative, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does it again, proving that she understands what real girls think and feel, with this twenty-second book in the beloved Alice series.