Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months [Hardcover]

Judith Viorst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2007

Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? And did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother? And what happens to her passion for household neatness and orderliness, her deep devotion to schedules, her compulsive yearning to offer helpful advice when Alexander -- now grown up, married, and the father of three -- moves his family into his parents' house? What happens is controlled, and sometimes not so controlled, chaos, as lives and routines are turned upside down and the house is overrun with scattered toys, pacifiers, baby bottles, sippy cups, pink-sequined flip-flops, jigsaw puzzles, and fishy crackers.

With her characteristic sparkle and wit, Viorst relates her efforts to (graciously) share space, to become (if only a little bit) more flexible, to (sort of) keep her opinions to herself, and even to eventually figure out how to unlock the safety locks of the baby's (expletives deleted) bouncy seat. She describes how she and her husband, while sometimes longing for the former peace and tranquillity of unravished rooms and quiet dinners for two unaccompanied by cries of "Oh, yuck!" survived and relished the extended visit of the Alexander Five. She also opens our eyes to the joys of multigenerational family living and to the unexpected opportunities to grow that life presents -- even under the most unlikely circumstances. Several generations of readers surely will relate to this funny and loving book, enhanced throughout by Laura Gibson's delightful two-color drawings.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Viorst has her house exactly the way she likes it, with all the fine things that she denied herself when raising three rambunctious sons. But that order is delightfully disturbed when her youngest son, Alexander (the inspiration for her famous picture book), his wife and their three young children return to the nest while their house is being renovated. Her account of the three-month stay, replete with disruptions, awkwardness and wonderfully affectionate moments, is a sweet and mildly humorous testament to a family whose loving bonds are powerfully evident. Viorst intersperses familial anecdotes with musings on modern parenting and its problems, including various approaches to accommodating three generations in one house. Merlington's tone matches Viorst's text perfectly, conveying Viorst's defiant defensiveness about and gentle amusement at her own foibles, particularly her penchants for order and her almost complete inability to repress the sharing of helpful advice. This charming minimemoir doesn't break any new ground, but it doesn't have to.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

About the Author

Judith Viorst was born and brought up in New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University, moved to Greenwich Village, and has lived in Washington, D.C., since 1960, when she married Milton Viorst, a political writer. They have three sons and seven grandchildren. Viorst writes in many different areas: science books, children's picture books, adult fiction and non-fiction, poetry for children and adults, and three musicals, which are still performed on stages around the country. She is best known for her beloved picture book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (October 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416550054
• ISBN-13: 978-1416550051
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,069,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Judith Viorst has written many books for children, including the classics Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and its sequels, and If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Stories. She is also the author of Just in Case, illustrated by Diana Cain Bluthenthal. She lives with her husband, Milton, in Washington D.C.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tender and clear-eyed reporting, November 6, 2007

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months (Hardcover)

Judith Viorst, prolific author of scads of books - children's, poetry, popular psychology, and others - has returned, this time with an intimate, tender, and truly funny story of the three months that her youngest son Alexander, his wife Marla, and their three small - five, two, and four months - children moved into the big Washington DC Victorian family home, the empty nest of a contented Viorst and her sage husband Milton, while renovations were being done to their own house.

Viorst describes the moving-in, the getting-adjusted, and the myriad changes that five additional people bring to a two-person household. She loves them but it isn't always easy. She holds her tongue. She resists giving helpful advice. She stores the breakables and baby-proofs for real. There are sippy cups, diapering supplies, toys, and brightly-colored clutter where before there had been clean surfaces and carefully-chosen adult things.

Viorst enacts rules, forbidding glue, play-dough and the eating of chocolate on the velvet upholstery. On the other hand, she plays with the kids. She sits on the floor and shows her grandchildren how to build houses of cards. She lovingly admires and respects her daughter-in-law (and of course her son) and baby-sits with gusto.

There are moments of utter poignancy, for example when granddaughter Olivia queries her grandfather as to who he thinks is the prettiest, she or her grandmother. The answer is pure diplomacy, ("Grandma, because she's my wife") though it's painful at the time.

True to herself, she includes sensible and smart observations on marriage and family life along with commentary on today's "hyperparenting" compared to the way she and her husband raised their sons in the 1960's. (Playpens were OK, and, later, they could take any lessons they wanted when they were old enough to ride the bus to and from that lesson).

This is a delightful little book, probably ideal for fans of Viorst and for fans of grandchildren.

- Eileen Galen

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How true !, December 29, 2007

By 

E. Stevens - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months (Hardcover)

As a new mother-in-law w/a first grandchild, I found this book
so useful b/c it helped me to laugh at myself and put
the conflicts w/my son and his new family in perspective.
A wonderful gift for any new set of grandparents, even if
they don't live in the same house for three months!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self-congratulatory and annoying, June 7, 2008

By 

Julie Hedlund (Lafayette, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months (Hardcover)

I read this book right after my husband, our two young kids and I moved back home after living for 2 months with my mother (in a VERY small house) during some home reconstruction. I expected to find some hilarious anecdotes similar to some of the humorous events (retrospectively) that transpired during our stay with my mother. There were a few funny moments, but on the whole, I found her excessive praise of how PERFECT her kids and grandchildren are to be not only annoying but also unbelievable.

Viorst spends a good deal of time talking about the plights of parenting today, and the tendency for kids to be over-parented, over-scheduled, and/or over-indulged. She takes great pains, however, to emphasize that HER sons and their wives do not make those parenting mistakes. Well then, why bring them up? Why not just write a book about the problem of parenting today? She admits that she let her son and daughter-in-law read/approve the manuscript before it was published, and you can sense that in the writing. It simply lacks the hard-core honesty that would make a book like this a success.

I guess it's just not all that interesting to read a book about a family that is ostensibly so perfect. I expected to read more about the fault lines in the relationships and the experience that the love of family overcomes. Maybe I should write that book...