Alice thinks her life is boring when in reality, she's having one experience after another that helps her mature. At 13 and in 8th grade, it's hard not to want to fit in, to have a boyfriend, to be curious about sex and relationships, and generally want excitement in one's life. At 5, having lost her mother to cancer, Alice is now hoping her father will remarry so she'll have a new step-mom whom she can love. Her older brother Lester is exasperating, her best friends both have difficulties at home that Alice helps to deal with, and as Alice discovers, it's not possible to control what happens in life, and maybe that's as it should be. Alice's frankness is at times funny, outrageous for the setting, and so believable of adolescence. Ages 11-14 133 pages
Reviewed by Aldean Kilbourn, Librarian
