Email from Germany

Question:

First of all: Thank you so much for writing these amazing alice books! I´m such a huge fan and i will always consider alice as one of my closest friends.
I´m from Germany and my aunt gave me my first alice book for my 10th birthday. It´s called “Peinlich, peinlich Alice” and i loved it so much that my mum had to buy
all the others that were published in germany by then in one month because i wouldn´t stop reading.
Because i was reading so fast, alice “grew up” faster than i did but then publishing of your alice books stopped in Germany and i was sad beyond believe.
It was harder than breaking up with my first boyfreind because i felt so close to Alice. But then my mom found out that there are other books dealing with Alice so we started buying
them in english and by the time i was ready to read them, my mom gave me the alice books so that her age would fit mine and now i´m eighteen and so is Alice, at least almost.
I just love her so much and i´ve read all the books like a hundred times an dso did my mom. When we´re having dinner we often end up laughing about her because i acted like she would have or because one of us remembered something funny lester said (by the way lester´s most hilarious moment was  when Alice discovered that mister sorringer was going to come to the wedding and she was going bananas and asked lester what they should do and lester told her that he was going to buy himself a magnum and shoot him between the eyes. I was laughing so hard i couldn´t stop for 2 hours). I feel just so close to her and she (you) really helped me growing up and helped me to accept and respect myself for who i am.
I hope you and your family and the people that are the most important to you are doing good. Lots of greetings and love from germany and when you get to work on alice for the next time, greet her and tell her that she´s great!

Phyllis replied:

I enjoyed your email so much.  What a nice Mom you have, to buy the series and give them to you when you reach the right age.  I’ve heard from a fewreaders that the German translations leave out quite a lot in some of the books.  I think this is true of some other translations too, but I have no control over that.  All the Alice books have been written now.  I turned in the manuscript for #28 at the same time I turned in #27, but I don’t think the editor has read it yet.  I may just like that last book best of all because it ties up so many loose ends, and lets you know what happened to each of the main characters.  I hope you’ll like it too when it comes out in 2013.