Alice in the Know [Hardcover]

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-10-This installment in the series takes place during the summer between Alice's sophomore and junior years. Her older brother's beautiful black girlfriend ends their relationship because her family objects to her marrying outside of her race, and an acquaintance is diagnosed with leukemia, which is what Alice's mother died from several years earlier. Neither subplot weighs down the story, which places its emphasis on more ordinary events in the life of this likable teen. Embarrassing or funny moments balance the serious ones. Perhaps the most striking feature of this story is the amount of advice that is offered on how to handle a number of tricky situations in which teens might find themselves. When Alice and her friends spend a weekend at the beach, four drunk boys stalk them on their way back to the hotel and Alice does some quick thinking to get them to safety. Throughout the story, Alice yearns to have more family nearby, or to attend a family reunion. Her wish is granted in the end, but not in the manner that she had imagined. Fans of the series will enjoy the teen's latest trials, but readers new to it are unlikely to be hooked. The episodic nature of the story, in which Alice deals with many inconsequential incidents, does not result in a compelling stand-alone read.–Catherine Ensley, Latah County Free Library District, Moscow, ID
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. The twenty-first book in the popular Alice series is an enthralling daily drama of a teen's "happy to be average" coming-of-age story, including awkward mistakes about family, sex, friends, and work, and thoughts about family and family tradition. As always, Naylor avoids heavy messages, even as she dramatizes hard, contemporary issues with pitch-perfect dialogue. Alice, 16, gets a tough summer job at an outfitting store and is fired for making a mistake, and she sends out intimate messages on e-mail ("How often do you masturbate?"), which go to all the boys in class. The teens also talk about date rape, and boys and girls have very different opinions. There are embarrassing moments (Alice gets her period early and makes a mess), as well as intense pain, prejudice, grief, and loss. This will grab Alice's fans as well as readers unfamiliar with the series. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689870922
• ISBN-13: 978-0689870927
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,130,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I guess I've been writing for about as long as I can remember. Telling stories, anyway, if not writing them down. I had my first short story published when I was sixteen, and wrote stories to help put myself through college, planning to become a clinical psychologist. By the time I graduated with a BA degree, however, I decided that writing was really my first love, so I gave up plans for graduate school and began writing full time.

I'm not happy unless I spend some time writing every day. It's as though pressure builds up inside me, and writing even a little helps to release it. On a hard-writing day, I write about six hours. Tending to other writing business, answering mail, and just thinking about a book takes another four hours. I spend from three months to a year on a children's book, depending on how well I know the characters before I begin and how much research I need to do. A novel for adults, because it's longer, takes a year or more. When my work is going well, I wake early in the mornings, hoping it's time to get up. When the writing is hard and the words are flat, I'm not very pleasant to be around.

Getting an idea for a book is the easy part. Keeping other ideas away while I'm working on one story is what's difficult. My books are based on things that have happened to me, things I have heard or read about, all mixed up with imaginings. The best part about writing is the moment a character comes alive on paper, or when a place that existed only in my head becomes real. There are no bands playing at this moment, no audience applauding--a very solitary time, actually--but it's what I like most. I've now had more than 120 books published, and about 2000 short stories, articles and poems.

I live in Bethesda, Maryland, with my husband, Rex, a speech pathologist, who's the first person to read my manuscripts when they're finished. Our sons, Jeff and Michael, are grown now, but along with their wives and children, we often enjoy vacations together in the mountains or at the ocean. When I'm not writing, I like to hike, swim, play the piano and attend the theater.

I'm lucky to have my family, because they have contributed a great deal to my books. But I'm also lucky to have the troop of noisy, chattering characters who travel with me inside my head. As long as they are poking, prodding, demanding a place in a book, I have things to do and stories to tell.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 'In the Know' Falls Short of 'Alice' Expectations, April 25, 2006

By 

Maria (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice in the Know (Hardcover)

As a faithful reader of the Alice series, I was delighted to see a new Alice book on the shelves of my local bookstore. In past books, I've felt that Naylor always manages to capture the adolescent mindset with ease. So I was disappointed to see that Alice in the Know fell short of my expectations.
It's the summer before Alice's junior year of high school, and she's decided to enjoy her freedom as much as possible. She begins work at a local department store, and appears in the installment in the Alice series, more self-confident than we've seen her in the past. Alice is forced to deal with more serious issues than she has in the past, too. She comes face to face with shoplifters and a close friend becomes seriously ill.
However, the overall arc of 'In the Know' is unclear. In past books, there have been large events that change the course of Alice's life -- a wedding, a school trip, etc. But 'In the Know' is really more of an account of Alice's summer than anything else.
The book becomes tiresome, when Ms. Naylor obviously goes out of her way to hammer a cautionary note into her latest. The most noticeable instance of this are the frequent reminders that smoking is bad for the health but by the time readers are old enough to read an Alice book, this message has already been hammered into their heads. While Naylor's intentions are admirable in this sense, older readers of the book will feel patronized.
We see more layers to most of the characters in this book, and creating wonderful is one of Naylor's strongest points. We learn more about Alice's mother and there is a truly touching scene between Alice and her father. We learn more about Mr. Jones, Pamela's father. However, Pamela's non-reaction to her father's engagement is surprising and out-of-character. Lester's character develops more in this book as he experiences his first major heartbreak.
While certainly not a bad book, 'Alice in the Know' is not the endearing, amusing book that we've seen in past books. Now, we can only hope that we see more of the great Alice charms in future books and Naylor can regain her remarkable gift of storytelling.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but somewhat disappointing, April 23, 2006

By 

Laura (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice in the Know (Hardcover)

I've grown up reading the Alice series, and have always found Naylor to be dead on accurate with many of the conflicting emotions of been a teen that Alice goes through.

Even though I am now in my twenties, and Alice and I no longer share the same age, I still always run out and buy the new Alice book the day it comes out in hardback.

I was disappointed in this Alice book, although Naylor's insight remains keen. I hoped to see more developments for characters I have loved for years, although there was some. Pamela's father gets engaged, and Alice faces the death of a beloved family member with maturity and grace.

That being said, I couldn't help but groan out of disappointment that another one of Lester's relationships has not worked out. I feel for the guy--I hope he meets a woman who treats him as well as he deserves fairly soon. I'm also waiting, just as Alice is, for that first fight with Sylvia--so that Alice can experience the frustration and love of a concerned mother for the first time.

Overall, a fairly decent book.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the best book of the series by far..., May 22, 2006

By 

Katie148 (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice in the Know (Hardcover)

I started reading the Alice series when I was twelve, and 12 years later I'm still reading it. I look forward to the release of each new Alice book with great anticipation, as it has always been a series I feel captures the adolescent experience more accurately than any other books for teenage girls.

This book, although it pains me to say it, was a bit of a disappointment. The book lacks a truly cohesive theme and reads more like a slightly mundane day-by-day account of Alice's summer. Naylor attempts to present the idea of family and Alice's desire for more contact with hers as the central theme of the story, but it feels forced. At times it seems as though Naylor suddenly remembered, "oh yeah...this book is supposed to be about connecting with extended family...I'd better throw something else in about that." The book does not have the effortless flow and cohesive storyline of so many of the previous entries in the series.

This book also seems a bit preachy at times. Naylor includes many cautionary passages about things such as traffic safety and the evils of smoking, and while these are pertinent teen issues and it is nice that she is trying to encourage girls to be safe and healthy, the way they are addressed seems out of place in the book. The sections dealing with these issues read exactly like what they are - encouragement from a much older person to stay away from the mentioned danger, not as the conversation or thoughts of an actual sixteen-year-old. I can see the age and experience of the author breaking through at times in the story, and it never used to be that way. The main reason I have enjoyed these books for so many years is because Alice always seemed exactly like the young teenager that she was, not an older woman trying to portray the thoughts and experiences of a young teen.

Another disappointment for me is the fact that Alice's stepmother, Sylvia, barely appears in the story at all. Every book since Sylvia's marriage to Alice's dad has been a little disappointing in this regard, as I feel her character has not contributed much to the books since the marriage. Alice spent the entire first 18 books of the series longing for a mother and trying to get her dad to marry Sylvia, and now that she finally has the mother she has wanted for so long, they seem to hardly interact at all. I want to see some real, important conversations between Alice and Sylvia. I want to see them have a real, huge mother-daughter argument. I want to see more storylines and more interaction for them - I waited years for Alice to finally get a stepmom and now she might as well not have one at all, for all the attention that is paid to the relationship between them. How about a book with a theme centered around Alice and Sylvia??

All in all, this book seems more like a transitional book in the series rather than a great, stand-alone story. The book lacks the punch and the life of so many of the previous ones. Faithful readers of the series will of course want to read this book and will be interested in the developments that occur for the main characters, but to anyone who has never read an Alice book before, I don't recommend you start with this one. Get a book from Alice's seventh or eighth grade years, and you can't go wrong. Those years of Alice's life were the golden age of the series, in my opinion.