I Screamed!

Question:

A month or so ago I wrote to you asking for a poster, and I just received it yesterday. I had been expecting a letter from my best friend who’s at sleep away camp, so I ran to the mailbox and skimmed through the mail. No letter. I was so disappointed! But then I saw the letter from you and I screamed! I was so happy and excited! I love the fact that you do this for fans. It makes so many people happy. I put the poster up right next to my bed, and now every time I go to bed I can think of my favorite author and my favorite book series and character. I am obsessed with Alice! I started the series a few weeks ago, and I’m currently on Alice Alone. I still have a ways to go, but I think it will be impossible to wait a whole year for the next book! And I can’t wait for the last one. Does it have a title yet? (You don’t have to say what it is if you don’t want to.) 
  I also just finished watching the Alice movie. I thought it was pretty good, but I wish that they didn’t make Alice’s hair so long, and made Pamela’a either really long or really short. And why did they make Elizabeth black? (Not that I have a thing against black people.) I also wish that Mrs. Plotkin was fatter, and a lot of other stuff, but you can’t make the movie exactly like the book, and I know that you can’t really help it. But anyways, thanks so much for the poster, and keep on writing! 

Phyllis replied:

I’m so glad the poster pleased you.  The title of the very last book in the Alice series will probably be “Always Alice,” a title that a number of readers have suggested.  I would have made the movie differently if I had been the producer.  None of the characters were exactly as I had imagined them, and I wish they could have brought in Gwen, but Alice doesn’t meet Gwen until later, and they were sticking fairly close to “The Agony of Alice.”  Yet they wanted to include different races among Alice’s friends, as indeed there are in the books, but they’ve made it hard for themselves if they develope these particular characters into a series.  Still, they stuck to the spirit of the Alice books, and the spirit’s really what’s important.