Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Alice In-Between
    Alice In-Between
    Alice In-Between
    Ebook154 pages1 hour

    Alice In-Between

    By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Finally, Alice is thirteen. But being a teenager isn't always as fantastic as Alice dreamed it would be. A sophisticated night on the town with her brother, Lester, and an overnight train trip to Chicago with Elizabeth and Pamela are exciting, but they also give her a first-hand look at some of the perils of grown-up life.

    The problem is, Alice doesn't really feel like a grown-up. But she doesn't feel like a kid anymore, either. She feels in-between -- and that's a pretty confusing place to be!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateMay 22, 2012
    ISBN9781442465817
    Alice In-Between
    Author

    Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    Phyllis Reynolds Naylor has written more than 135 books, including the Newbery Award–winning Shiloh and its sequels, the Alice series, Roxie and the Hooligans, and Roxie and the Hooligans at Buzzard’s Roost. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. To hear from Phyllis and find out more about Alice, visit AliceMcKinley.com.

    Read more from Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    Related to Alice In-Between

    Titles in the series (28)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Children's Family For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Isla No Place Like Home

      Nov 2, 2022

      Isla No Place Like Home
      10 min read

    • Article

      Isla No Place Like Home

      Nov 2, 2022

      Isla No Place Like Home
      10 min read

    • Article

      #book Of The Month

      Aug 15, 2022

      #book Of The Month
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

      Jun 10, 2020

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
      6 min read

    • Article

      Now Is the Time

      Nov 24, 2020

      Now Is the Time
      5 min read

    • Article

      You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down

      Apr 20, 2022

      You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down
      8 min read

    • Article

      Ita “Believe In Yourself ”

      Jun 15, 2022

      Ita “Believe In Yourself ”
      12 min read

    • Article

      Adulting in Motion: The Millions Interviews Emma Straub

      May 1, 2020

      I was working to better understand women in my mother's generation—maybe mothers in all generations—mothers who are further down the road than I am. The post Adulting in Motion: The Millions Interviews Emma Straub appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Arrangements: Coming of Age with Books

      Jun 26, 2018

      1.  “How many of you still play with dolls?” Depending on our moods: We rolled our eyes; we buried our burning faces in our arms; we groaned; we shrieked; we wished to be elsewhere; we were present. In the exact middle of eighth grade (the season in

      5 min read

    • Article

      Spooky Storyteller

      Oct 5, 2022

      Spooky Storyteller
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ordinary People

      Feb 24, 2021

      Ordinary People
      11 min read

    • Article

      Riding High

      Feb 26, 2020

      Riding High
      8 min read

    • Article

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun

      Jul 12, 2022

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Unauthorised Version

      Mar 28, 2021

      The Unauthorised Version
      13 min read

    • Article

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      Alan Cumming

      Nov 1, 2021

      Alan Cumming
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Edan Lepucki

      Dec 9, 2018

      To start, a list of the books I enjoyed very, very much: I expected to like Lydia Kiesling’s debut novel, The Golden State, not only because she is my friend, but because I only made her be my friend after reading her genius nonfiction on this very w

      4 min read

    • Article

      READER Reviews

      Dec 4, 2019

      You might not have read the Rabbit and Bear books before. If you haven’t, you need to know that in the first book Rabbit makes friends with Bear, and in the second book Rabbit is very clever and Bear is not. The third book, A Bite in the Night, which

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Alice In-Between

    4/5

    10 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Alice finishes 7th grade. The highlight of her summer is a trip to visit Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt in Chicago, taking the trip by train with her two best friends Pamela, who is too adventurous and sexually aware for her own good, and Elizabeth, who is far too prudish for her own good. As with other Alice books, there is a main story-line and several minor story-lines, a main theme, (which here is 'just how grown up do you want to be'), and a serious crisis.(spoiler alert)The serious crisis here is that on the train ride to Chicago, Pamela, who is 13 but could pass for 18 when she tries, decides to lead on a 37 year old man who hits on her. He later sexually assaults her (groping, not rape) and she learns a few hard lessons in life through that experience.And Alice remains endearing to the end.
    • 5/5
      This has to be my favorite so far in the series. I remember that in-between feeling so well. I feel like every couple of years you can't help but feel that way, or maybe that is just me. It's just one of those books that you can relate to and that makes you love it!
    • 2/5
      I had been so enchanted with the Agony of Alice book in 5th grade. I found that Naylor as an author has an ability to speak to young teenage girls. It is nice to see that Naylor is able to continue to develop the Alice character. The main theme of the book is to show that nothing is ever as bad as it seems.I find this Alice book to be an average book in the series. I find that Alice is a believable character. She is the typical awkward teenage girl that worries about how others perceive her. She wants to enjoy a summer vacation with her friends. These are all characteristics that a young teenager or pre-teen girl could relate to. It is a little bit different reading as an adult. It made me remember my middle school years, and glad that I no longer have to experience that. I find the dialogue to be believable for your average teenage girl as well.
    • 3/5
      Alice and her friends are going to be eighth graders! They are no longer the bottom of the rung, and they hang out almost every day at Mark Stedmeister’s pool. Alice and Patrick are together once more, and Elizabeth is finally beginning to open up to the idea of boys more. Pamela’s debating breaking up with Mark, but besides that, life is swell.Or is it? These daily pool hangouts cause Alice to admit to herself her one giant fear: deep water. She can’t swim, and she’s petrified of putting her head underwater. Is this going to hamper her ability to mature when everyone else around her is conquering their fears? After all, Elizabeth is going with boys, Alice’s father and Miss Summers have something going on—what, he won’t tell Alice—and Patrick is having a great experience in Canada with his family. Will her fear of deep water be the end of her life as she knows it?Not if her father and brother Lester have anything to say about it.ALICE THE BRAVE is a sweet story of a family banding together to help Alice overcome her fear. I enjoyed reading about how all of the characters we have come to care about grow up and conquer challenges of their own. Eighth grade, look out! Alice is ready for anything!

    Book preview

    Alice In-Between - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but I wasn’t a young woman, either. The more I thought about it, the more I decided I had those in-between blues.

    I’ve got the in-between blues, I said to Lester that afternoon as I sat on the porch with a book. They’ll pass, said Lester.

    THIRTEEN! IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING. Alice McKinley is an actual, official teenager. The problem is, she still sort of feels like a kid. Wasn’t being a teenager supposed to feel different? Turning thirteen happens overnight, but the teenager stuff takes time—and a little more patience than Alice has at the moment!

    Still, being thirteen does have its advantages. Alice is allowed to do more exciting things, like take a trip to Chicago with her two best friends. And when she takes a good look at all the relationship problems her older brother has, she realizes that in-between can sometimes be the perfect place to be.

    DON’T MISS

    Meet the author,

    watch videos, and get extras at

    KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

    COVER DESIGN BY JESSICA HANDELMAN

    COVER ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY JULIA DENOS

    ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

    SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK

    AGES 10–14 • 0511

    PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR includes many of her own life experiences in the Alice books. She writes for both children and adults, and is the author of more than one hundred and thirty-five books, including the Alice series, which Entertainment Weekly has called tender and wonderful. In 1992 her novel Shiloh won the Newbery Medal. She lives with her husband, Rex, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and is the mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of Sophia, Tressa, Garrett, and Beckett.

    Here’s what fans have to say about Alice:*

    i think the reason my friends and i like your books the way we do is because we have, at one time or another, found ourselves in similar situations and feel the same way as Alice in your books. it’s as though she’s actually a real person! reading an Alice book is like a really fun day; as soon as you begin, you just know that it’ll be really exciting, and when it ends, you kinda feel disappointed, but look forward to more.

    I sometimes get sad wishing alice were real. I feel like she’s my sister, i know so much about her.

    I am so glad that Alice isn’t perfect. She actually has problems like real people…. There’s something in Alice that can relate to us all.

    *Taken from actual postings on the Alice website. To read more, visit AliceMcKinley.com.

    Alice In-Between

    BOOKS BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR

    Shiloh Books

    Shiloh

    Shiloh Season

    Saving Shiloh

    The Alice Books

    Starting with Alice

    Alice in Blunderland

    Lovingly Alice

    The Agony of Alice

    Alice in Rapture, Sort Of

    Reluctantly Alice

    All But Alice

    Alice in April

    Alice In-Between

    Alice the Brave

    Alice in Lace

    Outrageously Alice

    Achingly Alice

    Alice on the Outside

    The Grooming of Alice

    Alice Alone

    Simply Alice

    Patiently Alice

    Including Alice

    Alice on Her Way

    Alice in the Know

    Dangerously Alice

    Almost Alice

    Intensely Alice

    Alice in Charge

    Incredibly Alice

    Alice Collections

    I Like Him, He Likes Her

    It’s Not Like I Planned It This Way

    Please Don’t Be True

    The Bernie Magruder Books

    Bernie Magruder and the Case of the Big Stink

    Bernie Magruder and the Disappearing Bodies

    Bernie Magruder and the Haunted Hotel

    Bernie Magruder and the Drive-thru Funeral Parlor

    Bernie Magruder and the Bus Station Blowup

    Bernie Magruder and the Pirate’s Treasure

    Bernie Magruder and the Parachute Peril

    Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry

    The Cat Pack Books

    The Grand Escape

    The Healing of Texas Jake

    Carlotta’s Kittens

    Polo’s Mother

    The York Trilogy

    Shadows on the Wall

    Faces in the Water

    Footprints at the Window

    The Witch Books

    Witch’s Sister

    Witch Water

    The Witch Herself

    The Witch’s Eye

    Witch Weed

    The Witch Returns

    Picture Books

    King of the Playground

    The Boy with the Helium Head

    Old Sadie and the Christmas Bear

    Keeping a Christmas Secret

    Ducks Disappearing

    I Can’t Take You Anywhere

    Sweet Strawberries

    Please DO Feed the Bears

    Books for Young Readers

    Josie’s Troubles

    How Lazy Can You Get?

    All Because I’m Older

    Maudie in the Middle

    One of the Third-Grade Thonkers

    Roxie and the Hooligans

    Books for Middle Readers

    Walking Through the Dark

    How I Came to Be a Writer

    Eddie, Incorporated

    The Solomon System

    The Keeper

    Beetles, Lightly Toasted

    The Fear Place

    Being Danny’s Dog

    Danny’s Desert Rats

    Walker’s Crossing

    Books for Older Readers

    A String of Chances

    Night Cry

    The Dark of the Tunnel

    The Year of the Gopher

    Send No Blessings

    Ice

    Sang Spell

    Jade Green

    Blizzard’s Wake

    Cricket Man

    Title Page

    ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

    An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

    1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    Copyright © 1994 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

    ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon &

    Schuster, Inc.

    The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.

    For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers

    Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

    Book design by Mike Rosamilia

    The text for this book is set in Berkeley Oldstyle Book.

    0311 OFF

    This Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition May 2011

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

    Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.

    Alice in-between / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. —1st ed.

    p. cm.

    A Jean Karl book.

    Summary: When motherless Alice turns thirteen she feels in-between, no longer a child but not yet a woman, and discovers that growing up can be both frustrating and wonderful.

    ISBN 978-0-689-31890-0 (hc)

    [1. Single-parent family—Fiction. 2. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title.

    PZ7.N24Ak 1994 [Fic]—dc20

    93008167

    ISBN 978-1-4424-2758-7 (pbk)

    To my sister Norma, who knows why,

    and to Colby Rodowsky,

    one of my favorite authors

    Contents

    One: On the Road to Raving Beauty

    Two: In the Fast Lane with Lester

    Three: Rekindling the Flame

    Four: The Pencil Test

    Five: Rescue

    Six: Of Heaven and Hell

    Seven: A Voice from the Past

    Eight: Poem

    Nine: Train to Chicago

    Ten: Pamela’s Room

    Eleven: Saving Pamela

    Twelve: Intimate Conversations

    Thirteen: A Present for Patrick

    Fourteen: Hospital Visit

    Fifteen: Holding the Fort

    1

    ON THE ROAD TO RAVING BEAUTY

    AUNT SALLY SAID IT HAPPENED TO HER, and to my cousin Carol. Dad said it happened to Mom.

    The summer between seventh and eighth grades, he told me, was when she really blossomed into a beauty. You can tell by her photos.

    I was eating crackers and cheese at the kitchen table, and decided I couldn’t wait for blossoms (leaves, petals, anything at all) to unfold. I wanted to be a beauty now. Not that I hadn’t been developing all along, but there wasn’t any name for what I was at the moment. I certainly wasn’t a child, but I wasn’t a shapely teenager, either. Aunt Sally said that, sometime after your thirteenth birthday, you look in the mirror and see a woman. Which was nice, because my birthday was less than a week away I wondered if there was any resemblance to Mom in me.

    Lester, I said, going into the living room, where my twenty-year-old brother was sprawled on the couch. Look at my face and tell me what you see.

    Lester opened one eye. Cheez Whiz on your chin, he said.

    I rubbed one hand across my mouth. Take a really good look, Lester! Study my whole face. Who do I remind you of most? I sucked in my cheeks slightly to make my cheekbones more prominent.

    Daffy Duck? said Lester.

    One of the problems of growing up without a mother is that there’s no one around who has any idea what it’s like to be a girl. For me, anyway, because I don’t even have sisters. Mom died when I was five, and ever since, I’ve had to pick up all my information about being female from my aunt and cousin and friends at school.

    Dad was writing checks in the dining room that night at the folding table he uses for a desk. And suddenly he said, May ninth already? Your birthday’s this Saturday, Al! My name is Alice McKinley, but he and Les call me Al, which is what happens when there are only men in your family.

    You remembered, I said.

    "Of course I remembered! Thirteen is pretty special, isn’t it? Do you want a party?"

    A few weeks before, I might have said yes, but I was thinking about the birthday party we’d just given Dad to celebrate his fiftieth, and I decided that one disaster was enough. Just Pamela and Elizabeth, I said, naming my two closest friends at school.

    You got it, said Dad. We’ll order in some KFC or something.

    Pamela’d already had her thirteenth birthday, and Elizabeth wouldn’t be thirteen till fall, but somehow I had the idea that by the time eighth grade began in September, we’d all be raving beauties. When I told Lester, he said, "Raving, anyway."

    The day before my birthday, I wondered if Miss Summers would say anything to me about it at school. Sylvia Summers is my Language Arts teacher, who’s been dating my dad since December, only they’re not having sexual intercourse, because I already asked Dad about it. At least they weren’t when I asked, but Dad said I couldn’t ask again, which means anything at all could happen. Except, knowing my dad, nothing’s happening. Dad believes in long, slow courtships, and I worry sometimes that he’ll let her get away.

    Miss Summers has light brown hair and blue eyes, and on that day she was wearing an orange-and-white-print dress with a wide orange belt, which made her waist look really tiny. If Dad had told her my birthday was coming up, though, she didn’t say anything, and I guessed that maybe Dad wanted to keep the celebration private—just between us and Lester and my two best girlfriends, which was okay with me.

    We’ll be on our poetry unit until the end of the semester, Miss Summers told the class, "and I’d like each of you, in the weeks ahead, to memorize a favorite poem and recite it to the class—a poem that has special significance for you. I want you to recite it in a way that we can see your enjoyment of it. Take your time, and let it be a poem that really speaks to you

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1