Alice in rapture, sort of / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"The Summer of the First Boyfriend," Alice's father calls it. It is also the summer between grade school and junior high. Alice's friends keep telling her what she has to do to be a successful seventh grader. She may need a leather skirt. (Alice knows she'll never have one.) And certainly she'll need that boyfriend. In fact, one of Alice's friends has heard that a girl will never have any kind of social life in high school if she doesn't have a boyfriend when she enters junior high. That makes Alice very glad she has Patrick. And glad when her friends Elizabeth and Pamela have boyfriends, too. It is going to be a good summer, she thinks.And, in this sequel to The Agony of Alice, it is a good summer. There are ball games in the park, bike riding, sitting on the front porch with Patrick and talking -- and sometimes eating chocolates -- and sometimes kissing. But there are problems, too. How do you make yourself beautiful when you are not? How do you cope with an older brother who has no tact and no understanding of your problems? And most of all, how do you act with a boyfriend? Some of the things she hears make Alice think she needs a manual of instructions.Through triumphs and disasters at the beach, through the trauma of dinner at the country club with Patrick, through moments of terrible embarrassment and discouraging attempts to sort out what having a boyfriend is all about, and through surprising thoughts and decisions, Alice persists in being Alice, a girl who wants to be like other people but who can't stop being herself. Her problems are fun and funny, and readers will find a lot of themselves and their own problems in Alice and her friends.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Patrick and Me (p. 1)
• 2 Sleepover (p. 10)
• 3 Your Lips! Your Arms! (p. 21)
• 4 The Girl with the Corkscrew Curls (p. 31)
• 5 Bad Mommies (p. 42)
• 6 The Up-Lift Spandex Ahh-Bra (p. 51)
• 7 The Music Lesson (p. 61)
• 8 Couples (p. 72)
• 9 What Happened at Jimmy's (p. 81)
• 10 The Surf and Spray Hideaway (p. 90)
• 11 Lester's Surprise (p. 102)
• 12 Breakup (p. 111)
• 13 Love Letters (p. 122)
• 14 Black Matches, White Gloves (p. 131)
• 15 An Emergency Mom (p. 147)
• 16 Patrick and Me (p. 156)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

PW said, ``Returning to the setting of The Agony of Alice , Naylor gives readers a wry and poignant tale. At the end of the summer Alice has become a very special person, and readers will have followed her escapades with eagerness and empathy.'' Ages 8-12. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-8-- Alice, from The Agony of Alice (Atheneum, 1985), gives a repeat performance that is every bit an equal to her first. Alice is in love, and her romance with Peter provides some awkward yet funny moments as she tries to sort out the ins and outs of dating and first boyfriends. For Alice, the course of true love does not run smoothly, for she is experiencing all of the anxieties of pre-adolescence. All the while, she longs for a mother to answer her questions about kissing and the unwritten rules about dating because her understanding, loving father simply can't help with some of the things that a girl needs to know. In the satisfying conclusion, Alice realizes that she had enjoyed Peter more when there was less pressure on the relationship, and the two become once again ``just friends.'' Naylor's dialogue crackles with reality and humor, and the situations in which Alice finds herself are appropriate to the age, yet truly original. A book that is wise, perceptive, and hilarious.-- Trev Jones, ``School Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 4-7. A hilarious first-person narrative about the trials and tribulations of Alice, who is sort of ready to face seventh grade.

Kirkus Book Review

A wide-ranging author--who has proved herself adept at fantasy, the teen-age novel, humor, and historical fiction--writes a funny, perceptive story about the summer before junior high: 12-year-old Alice's Dad calls it ""The Summer of the First Boyfriend."" Alice and Patrick were good friends all through sixth grade, but now their friendship is blossoming into something more. Alice, yearning for the advice she would have had from her mother (who died seven years ago), does her best to figure out how she should behave: Is is essential to have a boyfriend when entering seventh grade? What if she hasn't just brushed her teeth when Patrick wants to kiss her? She has several sources of contradictory advice--Aunt Sally in Chicago (Alice lives in Maryland) is willing but often out of date; her two closest friends are as concerned about the minutiae of ""rules"" as Alice; Dad and older brother Lester, while nice, have a definitely male point of view--though they are known to come through with sensible help when needed. Naylor affectionately captures the angst and humor of this turning-point age without a trace of condescension. A lively, authentic story, with refreshingly pleasant characters--one that may help readers to realize (as Alice does at summer's end) that adapting to everyone else's prescriptions is less important than being oneself. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.