ACHINGLY ALICE

Readers who have, with Alice, been waiting impatiently for her widowed father and favorite teacher, Miss Summers, to pick a date will have to wait some more; the Alice series (Outrageously Alice, 1997, etc.) continues to feature comic twists, comfortably familiar characters who still have surprises to reveal, and a plot that includes some serious issues. As she tries to decide whether to stick with boyfriend Patrick or play the field, Alice accompanies Elizabeth on her first visit to a gynecologist and gets an earful afterward, goes from the high of having Miss Summers over for Christmas to the low of hearing that she spent New Year’s Eve with another man, ruminates about topics as diverse as masturbation and careers, participates in a class project designed to analyze deceptive TV commercials, and struggles to cope with Miss Summers’s devastating announcement that she’ll be spending the next year in England as part of a teacher exchange. Naylor continues to usher Alice, and readers, toward adolescence with this well-knit, frequently hilarious story, cemented with buckets full of information, reassurance, and common sense. (Fiction. 10-13)