Thank You- ACTUAL ONE

Hello, I hope this is still an active place to contact you. I am not here to ask a question, but I am here to thank you for your Alice books.

A few weeks ago I was reminiscing on the books I loved so much as a child, and I started remembering your Alice series. I don’t remember that much, and I believe I never actually finished the series. But what I do remember is the hold it had on me when I was around 12, and the lessons it taught me.

I cannot say thank you enough for that series. I don’t know if you know how much it prepared young girls like me for teenager-hood. I grew up with no cousins around my age, especially female cousins. I was pretty much on my own in experiencing the adventure that was being a teenage girl in America. My mom was and still is in my life, but she has always been quite out of the loop. Older than the parents of a lot of my friends, and raised in a much more strict, patriarchal country, she just did not get it. She tried her best to prepare me, but her advice could only do so much. Your books helped me tremendously.

I stopped reading the books, if I recall correctly, around when I was 13/14. It was never something I actively looked back into, like a manual when I needed advice. Instead, the life of Alice was a story that hid in my subconscious, following me. It was not until a few weeks ago that I realized the extent to which reading about Alice’s life prepared me. I was never given “the talk” about sex from my parents, and it was not taught at school for me until long before I had already learned what it was. It was your book that taught me that. It was your book that gave me lessons on handling friendships, periods, crushes, school, and supporting others. Hell, it was your books that taught me what was appropriate to wear at a wedding! Not that my parents didn’t know this, just that “don’t wear funeral colors at a wedding” was something that was simply never told to me, I was just expected to know. Thank you for that.

(Or was it the other way around, where Alice tried to wear a white dress to a funeral? I do not remember all too well. I think it was a black/purple dress for a wedding)

Not all the lessons, I have used yet. I may never. My parents are still married, I have not had to deal with the grief of losing a mother, or the worries of gaining a stepmother. But I truly appreciate how you went the miles to include practically every experience a girl could go through– at least the lessons you are experienced enough to educate on. You have probably helped so many girls without mothers or caring mother figures in their lives, in a deeper way than you have helped me. Your Alice series is a treasure, and I hope you are able to read this.
Thank You.

I appreciate your letter very much, and have deleted everything that could possibly identify you.  Your email could have been sent by any hundreds of thousands of girls, because so many tell me the exact same thing.  In fact, I could have written it myself when I was a teenager, because my mother–although she was sweet and caring, knew almost nothing about life as a teenage girl in a city where we were living.  She grew up on a farm in Iowa, became a teacher in a country school when she was in her teens, and could not help us when it came to how to dress or use make up or do our hair, and she was especially worried about how far we would go with a boyfriend.  But she did her best, and I don’t hold that against her.

I hope that you will be able to find the books about Alice when she was in college and for all the years afterwards.  If you just are able to read the final book–Now I’ll Tell You Everything  (Alice’s life from 18 to 60) I think you would like it very much.