Here are all the embarrassing things that might happen to you in the fourth grade -- anddohappen to you, if your name is Alice McKinley:1. Your next-door neighbor (who happens to be a BOY!) sees you in your underpants.2. You sneeze beans all over your best friend.3. Your brother lies to you for fun and you believe him.4. You get trapped inside a snow cave -- yourownsnow cave, that is.5. You're the only person in thewholegrade who can't sing.Alice can't seem to do anything right anymore, especially where her big brother Lester is concerned. When he gets really angry with her, Alice doesn't know how to fix things between them. How is she going to get Lester to talk to her again? And will life ever get any easier? Fourth grade can't end soon enough!The second of three prequels to the beloved Alice series,Alice in Blunderlandlets younger readers get to know the girl everyone wants to be friends with, and proves once again that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor knows the fears, foibles, and fun of being a girl.
Fourth-grader Alice tries unsuccessfully to avoid embarrassing mistakes and to establish better relations with her older brother Lester.
This second of a prequel trilogy follows Alice through her fourth-grade year. As in her best Alice novels, Naylor writes with such wit and insight that she turns the struggles of everyday life into optimistic comedy, according to PW. Ages 7-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Fourth-grader Alice McKinley can't seem to do anything right. Her intentions are as good as gold, but her gullibility gets the best of her every time. Her older brother, Lester, has a great time pulling her leg, and usually his teasing is harmless. But one day he takes it too far and convinces trusting Alice that his new girlfriend is a child-abuse victim who plans to run away to China to escape her violent home life. Alice's kindhearted effort to help out leads to considerable embarrassment for everybody, especially the McKinleys. Add a few other world-class mistakes to the mix, and Alice's fourth-grade year starts to feel like a total failure. Naylor's straightforward, good-humored narrative provides series fans with extra insight into the events that shaped this beloved character into a favorite young adult heroine.-Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
\f2\froman\fcharset1 TimesNewRoman; Gr. 3-7. Embarrassment has always been a big part of the wildly popular Alice series about a young, motherless girl trying to work out how to grow up female, but her bumbling is the heart of this story: "Blunderbuss" is her middle name. Following Starting with Alice (2002), this is the second of three prequels to the Alice books, which began with The Agony of Alice in 1985. Here, Alice, in fourth grade, can't get the unspoken rules right. Once again, it's all good fun--except for one troubling episode. Alice adores Tarzan movies, and with the boy next door she bumbles things as she tries to act out the romance of Tarzan and Jane as they flee from "ignorant savages." The book flap says that Naylor based this book on her own experience growing up. Still, some things aren't timeless. Haven't we gone beyond racist stereotypes about stupid, comic savages in the jungle? This might be a good title for class discussion: all the laughter close to home, and then the question of what's really funny. What should Alice be embarrassed about? --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2003 Booklist
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) This second of three projected prequels (here Alice is nine) to the long-running series is ripe with gastrointestinal transgressions: a children's book author speaking at a school assembly unintentionally belches into the microphone, a slumber party is disrupted by Alice's unruly stomach rumbling, and the stomach flu gets in the way of Alice's birthday party plans. (There's also one small triumph: Alice burps a baby with reverberating success.) In the midst of all this noise, realistically self-conscious Alice learns about coping with life's mistakes (telling the wrong girl that her older brother Lester thinks she's special), embarrassments (getting a vitamin pill stuck up her nose), and humiliations (getting caught kissing Donald Sheavers). And while this seventeenth Alice book lacks the focused premise of the first prequel, Starting with Alice (rev. 9/02), which dealt with the family's move from Chicago to Maryland, it satisfies nonetheless, delivering more of Alice's honest and funny observations about her friends, her family, and herself. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.