The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Alice McKinley is in 6th grade and lives with her older brother Lester who is in college and her father who manages a music store. Alice fears she is growing backward because she never fails to embarrass herself. She sets her hopes on becoming Miss Cole's adopted daughter because she's sure that with a mother figure in her life she'd start growing forward instead of backward. Alice doesn't end up in Miss Cole's class though, she ends up in Mrs. Plotkin's class. Readers journey through Alice's school year as she shops for jeans and ends up opening the wrong fitting room door only to find a boy in his underpants to the Halloween parade where she plays the part of the horse's rear to Patrick to her first train ride. Through it all she confides in her journal and comes to confide in Mrs. Plotkin as well, finding the mother she wanted in an unlikely place.

Genre: Realistic Fiction-Controversial

Naylor, P. R. (1985). The agony of Alice. New York: Atheneum.