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    The Grooming of Alice
    The Grooming of Alice
    The Grooming of Alice
    Ebook191 pages2 hours

    The Grooming of Alice

    By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Growing up—and slimming down—is the tricky proposition in this repackaged installment of the beloved Alice series.

    The summer before ninth grade is all about getting it right—from head to toe. Alice and her friends want to start high school feeling like they always imagined a true high schooler feels: confident, capable, and pretty. But a little too much time standing in front of a mirror in their bathing suits makes Alice, Pamela, and Elizabeth feel the exact opposite of ready for high school. They have two-and-half months to transform themselves—but when Elizabeth starts taking the weight-loss plan too seriously, Alice worries that growing up (and slimming down) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    As Alice stumbles her way through the minefield of early adolescence, there are plenty of bumps, giggles, and surprises along the way. Every girl should grow up with Alice, and with this irresistible new look, a whole new generation will want to.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateMar 6, 2012
    ISBN9781442463066
    The Grooming of Alice
    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

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    Reviews for The Grooming of Alice

    3.5/5

    98 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Now that I am reading the series in order I am surprised to see how much younger Alice seems in this book compared to the last prequel. That's not to say that I don't enjoy this book. I just think she seems younger than she really is. This book is definitely enjoyable for both children (I first read this in fourth grade) and adults. It is a quick and easy read.
    • 4/5
      (The Agony of Alice is the first Alice book Naylor wrote, but the fourth if one is reading chronologically as she grows up.)The Mikenley's (Alice, her father, and her older brother, starting college) move to a new home and she will be stating a new school.Alice sets out to find the perfect mother figure to help her out, since her own mother died when she was young. Her first choice is the beautiful 6th grade teacher, Miss Cole, but she ends up in the class of Mrs. Plotkin, a dumpy, gray-haired slow moving woman.Of course, Alice learns many life lessons during the course of the book, some of them hard ones.In spite of a few spells of meanness early in the book, Alice remains a sympathetic, likable character - and a completely believable one.
    • 3/5
      Alice’s mother died when she was four, and now Alice is looking for a mother figure. She has her sights set on Miss Cooper, a sixth-grade teacher, but instead Alice is assigned to Ms. Plotkin’s class. Ms. Plotkin is dumpy and frumpy, not the kind of woman Alice figures she can get advice from about transitioning from a young girl to a young woman. Alice gets a boyfriend, her period, and puberty hits. These elements combine to put this book on the banned list, but I think it is an insightful and eye-opening piece of literature for middle-school and older elementary students. The writing is excellent, as well, as the author utilizes a natural speech pattern for dialogue. She also includes believable characters and situations that perhaps many young women could relate to.While this book is skipped over by many of the elementary studenst at my school, it is almost a rite of passage for girls growing into young women (especially at the middle school level). Most young women can relate to the trials Alice goes through.
    • 5/5
      This book is about a 6th grade girl that is living with her father and older brother. Alice's mother died when she was young. Alice is trying to grow up, but it is hard with two men living in the house. Alice is disappointed when she does not get into the teacher's class that she wishes. Read this book to see if Alice makes it through sixth grade!
    • 4/5
      The first chapter threw me a bit, with Alice looking back over the 'mistakes' of her past, but once she moved into the present, I was entirely charmed by her voice. Alice is 11, starting at a new school, and wants terribly not to do anything awful, and to find a mother. Needels to say these two wishes do not come true - and plenty of hilarity happens all round. I loved Alice's relationship with her father and brother, and her interactions with the teachers at her school were wonderfully written. I didn't find it dated, and I look forward to reading the rest of the book in the series. I'd give this to tweens looking for realistic, funny stories.
    • 3/5
      Alice is motherless, and going into her new school’s sixth grade. She desperately wants to fit in and act more grown up, but without a mother, how does she know how to go about it? She decides that the best way to do this is to be in the sixth grade class of Miss Cole, the beautiful and graceful lady she wants to emulate.Instead, she gets stuck in Mrs. Plotkin’s class. Mrs. Plotkin is dumpy and has no physical attributes to her name. Alice can’t believe her luck…until it gets worse! When she tries to fit in, it seems as though she’s humiliating herself instead. Like how she is rude to Mrs. Plotkin in an effort to get transferred to Miss Cole’s class. Or when she wears too much perfume to try to emulate Miss Cole. Or when she walks in on a boy in his dressing room, only for him to turn out to be Patrick, the safety patrol in her class.Will the humiliations ever end? Or will Alice just learn to accept the good with the bad, and thus begin to grow up as a result?This is the beginning of a marvelously realistic series about a girl going through puberty, social changes, love, family, and friendship. Alice is sweetly vulnerable yet lovingly feisty, a girl caught in the web on the way to being a teenager. Every girl will be able to relate to Alice on some level.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book about a fifth grade girl who lived with her widowed father and college age brother. As she searched for a substitute mother amongst her teachers she came to realize you can't judge a book by it's cover. An easy read.
    • 4/5
      Eleven year old Alice, growing up without a mother, decides she will “adopt” a mother and hopes to be in a popular teacher’s class. When she is instead placed in frumpy Mrs. Plotkin’s class, she learns that it is what’s inside a person that counts more. Mixed in to the story are Alice’s encounters with boys, friends, and the pains of growing up.
    • 4/5
      In this first book in the Alice McKinley series, Alice is in 6th grade and starting over at a new school. Her mother died when she was little and now Alice decides that she needs a female role model because she feels embarrassed at some of the 'childish' mistakes she's made. She sets her sights on a teacher at school, the glamorous Miss Cole, but is disappointed when she's placed in Mrs. Plotkins's class instead. Throughout the year, Alice begins to grow up, although she sometimes feels like she's growing backwards.

    Book preview

    The Grooming of Alice - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

    I looked first at Pamela and then at Elizabeth. No ice cream, no chips, and jogging three miles with ankle weights? This was a summer?

    THE SUMMER BEFORE NINTH GRADE IS ALL about getting it right—from head to toe. Alice and her friends want to start high school feeling like they always imagined a true high schooler feels: confident, capable, pretty. But a little too much time standing in front of a mirror in their bathing suits makes Alice, Pamela, and Elizabeth feel just about as far away from high-school ready as possible. They have two and a half months to become the girls they think they should be . . . but when Elizabeth takes the weight-loss plan too seriously, Alice starts to worry that growing up (and slimming down) isn’t all it’s cracked up 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 © 2012 BY JULIA DENOS

    ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

    SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK

    AGES 10–14 • 0312

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

    The reason I love these books is because Alice is not PERFECT she has real life problems like everybody else. She is a teenage girl that is trying to understand life. PLEASE KEEP COMING OUT WITH THESE WONDERFUL BOOKS. Sometimes I try and read the books a little slower so it will never be over!—An Alice fan

    I thought I read all the Alice books . . . [then] I went to the Young Adult section and saw a bunch more. I felt like screaming! I hope you continue writing Alice books forever. . . .—Gina

    Please, never stop writing Alice books. I hope they makes lots of girls as happy as they made me!—Caitlin

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

    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.

    The Grooming of Alice

    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

    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 © 2000 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 Old Style Book.

    0212 OFF

    First Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition March 2012

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds

    The grooming of Alice/Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

    A Jean Karl book.

    Summary: During the summer between eighth and ninth grades, Alice and her friends Pamela and Elizabeth decide to improve themselves through exercise.

    ISBN 978-0-689-82633-7 (hc)

    [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Body image—Fiction. 3. Self-perception—Fiction.

    4. Summer—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.N24Gt 2000

    [Fic]—dc21

    99-32184

    ISBN 978-1-4424-3496-7 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-4424-6306-6 (eBook)

    To Lindsey Hundt and her

    daughter, Julia Horowitz,

    with thanks for all their help

    Contents

    One: The Program

    Two: The Long Good-bye

    Three: Volunteer

    Four: Quiz

    Five: Saving Lester

    Six: Hiding Pamela

    Seven: Blowup

    Eight: A Heated Discussion

    Nine: Grounded

    Ten: Blue Monday

    Eleven: For Girls Only

    Twelve: The Next Good-bye

    Thirteen: Marilyn

    Fourteen: The Traveler Returns

    Preview: Alice Alone

    1

    THE PROGRAM

    IT’S GOING TO BE ONE OF THE MOST exciting summers of our lives, Pamela used to tell Elizabeth and me whenever we thought about the summer between eighth and ninth grades. "All the stupid things we’ve ever done will be behind us, and all the wonderful stuff will be waiting to happen."

    But now, on the first day of vacation, as the three of us stood in our bathing suits in front of the full-length mirror in Elizabeth’s bedroom, we realized that the same bodies were going into high school along with us, the same faults, the same personalities, some of the same problems we’d had before.

    Elizabeth, with her long dark hair and lashes, her gorgeous skin, broke the silence first. "I’m fat! she said in dismay. Look at me!"

    We looked. She was the same beautiful Elizabeth she’d always been, except that her face and arms were slightly rounder, but she was pointing to her thighs, which puffed out just a little below her suit.

    Saddlebags! I have saddlebag thighs! she cried. My legs look like jodhpurs!

    They didn’t, of course, but before I could say a word, I heard murmurs on the other side of me coming from Pamela. Pamela is pretty, too, though not as drop-dead beautiful as Elizabeth. She’s naturally blond, and wears her hair in a short feather-cut, like Peter Pan. It always seemed to me as though Pamela Jones had the perfect figure, but it didn’t seem that way to Pamela.

    I have absolutely no definition, she observed.

    Huh? I said. Were these girls nuts?

    My arms and legs are like pudding! One part looks the same as the rest.

    "Pamela, anyone can tell your arm from your leg," I told her.

    But you can’t tell what’s fat and what’s muscle!

    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. "People just want to look at you, Pamela. They don’t want to dissect you!"

    Pamela, however, meant business. Well, I certainly need to do some toning, she said.

    "And I want to lose this fat, said Elizabeth. What do you want to change, Alice?"

    Friends, I thought. But I just took a good, long look at myself in the mirror and thought about it. I’ve got the same color hair as my mom had, they tell me—strawberry blond. Mom died when I was small, and I don’t remember much about her, but they say she was tall and liked to sing. I’m more on the short side, and can’t even carry a tune. I’m not fat, but I’m not thin. I’m more plain than I am pretty, but I’m not ugly. Miss Average, that’s me.

    I don’t know, I said finally. What do you guys think I should change?

    You should never ask anyone that. You’re just begging for worries you never had before.

    Well, if you want an honest opinion, your waist is a little thick, Alice, said Elizabeth. One thing about Elizabeth, she’s loyal to a fault. You ask her to tell you something, she tells.

    And your legs are too straight, said Pamela. I mean, you don’t have to be ashamed of them or anything, but your calves hardly have any curve.

    Your breasts could be a little fuller, said Elizabeth. Of course, they’re bigger than mine. . . .

    And your arms have no definition at all, Pamela finished.

    It’s really weird, you know? Five minutes before, I had put on my bathing suit, ready to go over to Mark Stedmeister’s pool with the gang, feeling really good about myself and my friends, and suddenly I was disintegrating before my very eyes! I had this new royal blue bathing suit that looked great with my hair, and now nothing looked right.

    There’s only one solution, said Pamela. We’ve got to start an exercise program. We’ve got exactly two and a half months to get ourselves in shape before school begins. Because how ever you look when you start ninth grade, that’s how people will think of you for the next four years.

    Now that was a sobering thought. I don’t know where Pamela comes up with stuff like this, but she’s got a cousin in New Jersey who knows all about what they think in New York, so we learn a lot from her. What we don’t get from Pamela’s cousin, I get from my cousin Carol in Chicago, who’s two years older than Lester, my brother, and used to be married to a sailor.

    I’d never seen Pamela quite so gung ho as she was now.

    If we get up at seven each morning for the next ten weeks . . ., she began.

    Seven! I wailed.

    Well, eight, maybe. And we jog for three miles . . .

    In public? Elizabeth gasped.

    We stared. One reason we like Elizabeth is that her whole world sort of spins on a different axis.

    "I suppose we could jog nine hundred times around your room, if you’d prefer, Pamela said dryly. But if we spend the next ten weeks jogging every morning with ankle weights, and do push-ups, we might look reasonably good by the time we start high school. And no ice cream. No chips. No Oreos or anything like that."

    I looked first at Pamela and then at Elizabeth. No ice cream, no chips, and jogging three miles with ankle weights? This was a summer?

    Elizabeth shook her head. I don’t want anyone to see me sweat, she declared.

    If you jog, you’re going to sweat, Elizabeth! Pamela told her. "You have to sweat! You’re supposed to sweat! If you don’t sweat, the fat will stay right there, and you’ll keep those saddlebag thighs forever."

    I looked at Elizabeth’s face and wished Pamela hadn’t said that. It’s one thing to talk about saddlebags yourself, but something else to hear your friends say it.

    Oh, come on! I said, grabbing Elizabeth’s beach towel and tying it around her waist. Let’s go on over to Mark’s. Everybody’s waiting.

    Everybody was. We’ve been hanging out at Mark Stedmeister’s pool for the last few summers, and even after Pamela and Mark broke up for the second time, we still go over there. Pamela went with Brian for a while after that, and then she wouldn’t go out with either one of them, and now the guys have sort of lost interest. We’re still all good friends, though.

    Patrick Long, my boyfriend, was there, and Justin Collier, who likes Elizabeth. Except for Patrick and me, though, we don’t couple-off the way we used to. Right after sixth grade, couples were in. Most of us had never had boy- or girlfriends before, so everyone wanted one and found someone to hold hands with, whether they liked each other or not. Now we mostly do things as a group, and only Patrick and I are still going together.

    Heeey! The babes! Brian yelled when he saw us, and we smiled. A year ago, there would have been sheer terror beneath my smile, because I’d been deathly afraid of deep water, only nobody knew it, not even Dad. It wasn’t until I’d confided in my twenty-one-year-old brother that I learned to swim the deep end, when Les took me to a pool and helped me swim across one corner of it.

    Elizabeth and Pamela and I dropped our towels on a deck chair and dived in. Elizabeth went first because she wanted to hide her thighs, I went next because I didn’t really care, and Pamela was the last one in because she wanted to show off her bright red bikini with the halter top. Patrick dived in the other end and came up the same time I did. We swam over to the other side of the pool together,

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