Alice in April, 5

By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Book Overview

April is the cruelest month, said the poet, and Alice McKinley would agree. April is a hard month. Not that she doesn't have some fun. It does begin with a wonderful April Fool's Day joke on her brother, Lester. But it also begins with Aunt Sally reminding her that she will soon be thirteen (as if anyone could forget something so important) and then she will be Woman of the House, since her mother is long dead. It is an awesome responsibility. All her life she had assumed that her father and Lester were there to take care of her; now she is going to have to take care of them. Taking care of Lester, alone, could be a full-time job, she thinks. Being Woman of the House has all sorts of drawbacks. For example: It never occurred to her that when she suggested her father and Lester ought to have physical checkups, her father would insist that she have one too. How could you let a doctor see you naked?

Of course, Alice is still in school. And there she faces another crisis. She might be Woman of the House at home, but in school she needs a different kind of name, one given by a table full of boys in the cafeteria Depending on their figures, girls are being given state names -- some states have mountains and others do not. Will flat, flat Delaware or Louisiana be her fate? Alice lives in fear that it might be, though even worse is the fear that she might not get a name at all.

The month ends with a dinner party for her father's birthday (part of being Woman of the House) that has more downs than ups -- and with a totally unexpected event that makes Alice and everyone she knows grow up a little and wonder a little deeper about life and the future. April is a hard month, but reading about Alice in April is to find that most tragedies (though not all) pass and tears can turn to laughter and delight.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1442427574
• ISBN13: 9781442427570
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

A funny book about a troubled girl

Alice in April is about a girl who is having trouble with boys giving the girls at school nicknames of a state by it's geography, in other words ,"hills or no hills". If you like books that are funny, maybe even true life, Alice in April is the book for you.

I think I've run out of words to describe Alice books!!

Superb! Wonderful! Gorgeous! Extroidonary! Lovely! All right, guess not! This book provides an even FURTHER look into Alice's life and the characters--oh, the characters!--just pop even more. I feel like I'm standing right next to them! I found the topic of the pelvic exam for Elizabeth wonderful! Not many young adult fiction writers will even touch on those subjects that girls really need to know about. More sex talk and descriptions of a pelvic exam, so beware for tender minds who can not handle that information. These books seem to keep you blushing harder with every installment and that's really what we need in today's young adult fiction! Bravo, Phylis! Blessed be!!

Wonderful!

In this book Alice is becoming a teenager and is now "woman of the house" and goes a little too far with the idea. Read all the other Alice books too, they're great!

The best kids' book I've ever read

I'm only 12, but this is the best book of the hundreds I've read. Alice McKinley's aunt reminds her that she's almost 13 and will be Woman of the House soon. (Her mother died when she was four.) Alice gets a head start on her womanhood by cleaning the entire house, having her father and brother get physical checkups, and throwing a birthday bash for her father's fiftieth birthday. Besides that, she must survive the latest crisis at school: the boys are matching the girls' chest sizes with a state according to its mountains' heights! Perspective yet hilarious! My favorite book ever until the next Alice book comes out