The lovably awkward heroine of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s popular Alice series is back in a sweet prequel that casts her as a hapless third grader about to start school in a brand new state. Following the death of her mother, Alice McKinley finds herself moving across the country to Maryland with her music store manager father and her teenage brother Lester.
If only starting over was easy for Alice, who gets off to a rough start. It seems like everybody at school already has a best friend (or two, in some cases!) and poor Alice is just stuck hanging out with the weird boy who lives next door. Even worse: she seems to have made quite a few enemies on her quest to find friendship—an older crossing guard and a pack of attached-at-the-hip girls known as the Terrible Triplets have it in for her, and she even gets herself landed in the principal’s office for telling a big fib to her classmates.
Without a mother to help guide her, how can Alice ever expect to navigate her way through this new school? The answer, of course, is with pluck and determination that middle and older readers will relate to and cheer for.
ISBN13: 9781442446427 224 pages. Ages 7 & up.
Recommended by Molly Crumbley, Librarian, Maryland, USA.
