Alice’s Familiar World

Comment:

This is the first time I’ve sent an email to an author – I considered handwriting a letter, but my penmanship is terrible and I’d rather it be legible 🙂 I wanted to thank  you. Your Alice books are something else – I had no idea you had continued the series (having only a few of the titles when I was a child), so I was delighted to see that there was a final book available. And it far exceeded my expectations, I don’t remember the last time a book had me crying quite like that.

Alice influenced me far more than I realized – I recently treated myself to a copy of every single book in the series (and yes, I just saw your post about a collection coming but I am impulsive and impatient with book-buying). Re-reading through her adventures reminded me of the origins of so many things that I still say and do (like keeping a journal of “backwards” things that happen) – it felt like spending an afternoon with old friends. Being a bit of a solitary creature (I’m an only child through and through), I had forgotten how much I was able to get lost in your books and get the feeling of belonging and friendship – it’s better than therapy, quite frankly.

If you had asked me last month, I would have had a million questions for you about their futures and the rest of the story….but you’ve already handled that with your beautiful last book. So instead this is going to be just a big thank you. Thank you for creating a set of characters that I “fit in” with, for having them go through real struggles and real questions and not have the books over influenced by trends and the media (like so many young adult novels are nowadays). Thank you so much for writing these – no matter how low I feel sometimes, I can pick any of the Alice books up and within minutes, be absorbed in her familiar world and have my troubles be on pause.

Thank you for Alice. You rock
Phyllis replied:

I so appreciate your email.  This is what I hear most from readers:  that the Alice books are so real.  Probably because my own feelings, and some of my own experiences, or friends’ experiences, are in the book.  I guess we write the kinds of books we would like to read, and I could have used a few Alice books when I was growing up.