Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I loooove the alice books and I have an idea for when the series ends. Could you do a spin-off with one book from Elizabeth’s point of view, one from Pamela’s, one from Gwen’s and maybe even one from Patrick’s?

That would be really cool.

Also, in The Agony of Alice, it says Elizabeth has her ears pierced, but in All But Alice, it says she doesn’t. Later it says she does. So does she or not? Just wondering.

Thank you!

Phyllis replied:

It’s an interesting idea, but it would probably turn out to be embellishments of things that had already happened, and there are so many other kinds of books I want to write. As for all the mistakes, you’ve found one of many. We’ve discovered that birthdates have changed, body shapes changed…there are so many errors. Finally, to keep things straight, the copy-editor made an Alice “bible,” they call it, in which every detail from every book was recorded, divided into categories. For example, you can find out how many girlfriends Lester had, and what their names were; every costume Alice ever wore for a Halloween party, a description of Elizabeth’s bedroom…. I keep a copy of this–revised yearly–at my chair each time I write a new Alice book, and the copy-editor uses it too to make corrections. I asked my editor if they couldn’t publish this “bible” after the series was over, because it’s fun to leaf through, and readers can pick up details they missed in first reading the books. She said they would do better than that–they’d put it online so that everyone could read it. Great idea! But it won’t appear until the very last Alice book is published in 2013.

Posted on: June 30, 2011