I’ll Cry for Days

Question:

I know you get comments like this every day, but I want to say thank you with all my heart for writing these books.  I have managed to get my hands on all of them (about 5 times now! I have read every published Alice book, start to finish, during the summer ever since I was about 10 I think.) until this year though, I hadn’t cried in any of them. But reading Reluctantly Alice, I just sobbed. Probably didn’t help that I had my period at the time either, but that’s not the point. I FELT everything Alice felt, it was the strangest thing. I think it was nostalgia and the weird feeling when your favorite book character is younger than you in half the series (I’m turning 16 in a month.) I was trying to think “why this time?” and it’s not even that I’m watching Al grow up, or that I’m growing up, it’s that all of the funny things and tragedies that occur, in many ways, I am Alice and I don’t want to get too old to appreciate her. The books could not have been written better (although I did find a mistake in the Agony of Alice! Liz has pierced ears in that book and then she just….doesn’t in the others.) I know I’m going to cry for days (no exaggeration) when Always Alice comes out, but I know the book will be worth it. Thank you Mrs. Naylor for giving me the gift of my favorite books. I’ll always love them and I plan to own the whole series some day. The words of Alice McKinley are immortal, and even though the series with her may come to a close, my adventures with her never will.

Phyllis replied:

I’m afraid you will need a whole box of tissues for the last Alice book, coming out next year.  At least, that’s what my agent seems to think.  But hopefully there will be enough funny scenes and happy events and wonderful people to keep you happy for weeks.  Thanks for writing.