Alice Blog

I LOVE THE SERIES SO MUCH

Hiya! I just wanted to say that I have fallen in love with the Alice series again!!! During this time I have a lot of time on my hands and I decided to read my favourite book series again!! I am 16 and relate to Alice so much and all the questions that she asks her dad and Lester are all the questions I want answering! I’m am on ‘please don’t be true’ which is around the age i’m at the mo! I think Patrick has made my expectations for boys very high, I love him!! I wanted to say thank you so much for this series, if i have children I hope to give them to them to read as they are so amazing!! I hope you are well. –

I appreciate your email so much, and yes, I am well.  It was fun putting myself in Alice’s place all through these books–as I must do with every character in every book–but I enjoyed asking the questions I wished I’d had the nerve to ask someone when I was her age.  “Please Don’t be True” was especially fun to write because I worked for a few years at a University of Chicago clinic, but that was a long time ago.  So I asked an Alice fan of mine who had attended that school to scout out a bench where Alice and Patrick could be alone, and he found the perfect spot.

Alice! A huge fan

Hi! I’m Charlotte and I just wanted to tell you that I’m a huge fan of both the Shiloh and Alice series. However, I really really love the Alice series. I got my first Alice book when I was 11 and over time I read the series out of order for the first time. Then that year for Christmas I asked for the whole series, which now sit on a special shelf. I have read the whole series through I think about 4 times now, I actually finished the last book today. I just wanted to say thank you, over the years I have become really connected to the characters and whenever I feel down I just pull out one of the books. Alice has taught me so much about so many different things. I think the most important being about body image and relationships. I’ve struggled lately with body image, as I’m a 15 year old girl, but just reading the books has really retaught me that the important thing is that you’re healthy. So if you’ve read to here, thank you. You’re books have had such a big impact on my life. I hope you stay safe during this crazy time.

 

Thank you so much for writing to me.  I’m staying as safe as I can–so safe, in fact, that my car battery went dead and I had to get a new one.  I’m delighted that the Alice books mean so much to you.  I think that the majority of letters I get from Alice fans deal with body image or relationships.  Girls, especially, have a tendency to choose some small aspect of their body and maximize it’s importance.  For example, I was born with a brown mole, about the size of a penny, on my right buttock.  I didn’t think much about it until an aunt jokingly referred to it as my rotten spot.  I asked my mother if a man would ever marry me because of it, and she said, wisely, that my husband would love me so much it wouldn’t make any difference .  That was a comforting thing to say, but it still took me a long time to believe her, or to realize that people close to you like or love you for your whole self, not some little part of you.  I so enjoyed writing the Alice books and do miss those six months of each of the 28 years it took to write the series.

Boxed set titles

Hi Phyllis! Longtime reader who is not revisiting the high school years during quarantine. I’m so pleased you’re still answering questions and engaging with readers! I was wondering how the high school-aged boxed set titles (Please Don’t Be True; You, Me and the Space In Between, etc.) got their names. Are they direct quotes from the books? Or a phrase representing some of the key themes in each collection? Did you come up with the names? Or the publisher? Thanks so much for your time!

A reader who is not revisiting or is now revisiting her high school years?  I’m glad you’re being entertained!  Actually, the editor came up with those titles as representing some of the key themes in each collection.  Long titles were pretty popular for a while–still are–and I liked them too.

Alice movie?

When was the movie made? And who was made by? You or somebody else?

You didn’t mention what movie you’re talking about.  I’m going to assume it’s the one about Alice–“Alice Upside Down”–based very loosely on the book, “The Agony of Alice.”  I think that anyone who didn’t know the Alice series would enjoy it.  The basic problem was that the casting was way off on some of the characters, and obviously the screen writer hadn’t read more of the series–just that one book, or possibly a few.  It was an Open Pictures/Avondale Entertainment Production.

Re-reading Alice yet again

I have written to you in the past, years and years ago, to tell you how much the Alice series has meant to me. And now I’m writing again because, as it turns out, Alice is still a comfort to me at 33 years old. It seems I turn to her not only when I have nothing new to read, but also when I am lonely or depressed. When my dad died three years ago, I abandoned Lilac Girls and embraced my old friend Alice, and it gave me the comfort I needed to not feel so alone. And I have turned to her again in the midst of this pandemic. Since I can’t be with my real friends and family, Alice is a wonderful and constant companion. I started with Alice Alone when I couldn’t get into the book I was reading at the time, and intended to only read it until something new sparked my interest. Well, now I’ve read all the way up to Alice’s senior year because it’s so nice to settle in with a faithful and familiar friend when it seems like the world has turned upside down. Once again, thank you for Alice. I’ll continue to read her stories until my sight fails me, or my comprehension is muddled from the effects of aging. Thank you, thank you.

It’s wonderful to hear from Alice friends of all ages.  When you get to the 28th book, Now I’ll Tell You Everything, the last in the series, taking Alice from age 18 to 60, you will have even more to identify with.  It was  calming for me when I wrote the series.  Over that 28-year span in which I wrote it, there was always something upsetting going on in the world, and yes it was a nice escape, though always a realistic one.  Thanks so much for writing to me.  Enjoy the next book!

Thank you!!!

Thank you so much for writing the Alice books, I’m passing on including my email, bc I don’t have one at the time. I’m just writing this to tell you that the Alice series is so encouraging and relatable! Everything that Alice worries about, is stuff I worry about. Thanks!

And I’ll bet she even worries about some things you haven’t thought of yet!  I’m so happy to know that you are enjoying the series.  I really loved writing all 28 books; you and Alice will know each other very well by the time you finish!

More about Alice…

Hi! I know the Silver Spring/Takoma Park area pretty well, and I was just wondering if there is a specific area/neighborhood that Alice had lived in. Also, is there a particular school that she went to?
Thanks!
PS I am a HUGE Alice fan!

No, I try to be careful not to be that specific.  Otherwise it hampers the writing.  I have to make up my own neighborhood.  If it’s too true to life, then people who know the area will start writing to me saying, “There isn’t a school on that street” and “that shop burned down two years ago.”  But I’m so glad I chose an area that is meaningful to you.  I lived in Silver Spring for awhile, near the Takoma Park border, so it just seemed  a good place for her to live.  (The Melody Inn was based on the music store, Dale’s Music, that used to be in the heart of Silver Spring). I hope you are able to read all 28 books in the series.

A belated thank you from a longtime fan

Dear Mrs. Reynolds Naylor,

I hope this note finds you happy healthy and well! I’m a 27 year old resident of the DMV area and was randomly inspired to google one of my favorite book series growing up… Alice.

I have thought about and remembered many scenes from her stories in the past years, idly, as I’ve moved through my life learning lessons or even just shuffling through the mundane, washing dishes and suddenly recalling a scene where she cried at school or recalling my mother’s delight when I shared the laundry poem with her… missing my mom… being grateful I didn’t lose her when Alice lost hers.

As a child, your books gave me an escape and they gave me validation. At a time when all my books were about white people (because if they were about black people they were historical dramas or painstakingly inner-city “urban” [a child can only read of so many imagined lynchings and shootings]) Alice didn’t make me feel isolated. I didn’t read her books imagining that she looked like me instead (as I routinely did with others). She was just this wonderful transcendent character who I’m tearing up thinking about all these years later.

So I wanted to take this moment to write to you and tell you that you’re an inspiration, a magnificent storyteller and that I simply love your work.

Thank you for using your gifts in a way that has brightened so many lives with that spark of feeling understood, with laughter and joy and empathy and the sort of enlightenment that shines on the self… illuminating the beautiful maze of girlhood and the continuous becoming that is womanhood.

My Chopin-Liszt: (since I literally had to throw your books away along with all my other favorites, my diaries, my cards, and everything not plastic glass or metal when I was 17 due to contamination)

– the full Alice series, to reacquaint myself with an old friend, and for posterity. My little cousin is at the perfect age to read Alice books and she would have gotten them as hand-me-downs like I did, if that would have been possible. Instead she’ll have them as a new gift.

Thank you for the gift you’ve shared.

Thinking of you with gratitude,

Nevada

You’ve certainly made my day!  I’m just delighted that your little cousin is going to get to enjoy them too.  I never had a daughter, so perhaps Alice was the substitute for me, though I really identified with Alice myself, even though I was fortunate to have my mother through all my growing up years.  I cried as I was writing some of the scenes from the books, and on book tours, there were certain passages that I never read aloud because they always made me tear up.  But whenever I felt it was getting too heavy, writing a scene with Lester in it, or Aunt Sally, was something I enjoyed so much.  And it makes me happy to that readers enjoyed the books too.  Thank you for your letter.  It meant a lot.

 

 

How Can I Buy the whole Alice collection?

I loved the Alice series when I was in middle school and high, and would love to buy the whole collection for my niece.  I understand that the books come in three paperback collections:  Alice in grade school, Alice in middle school, and Alice in high.  Where will I find them listed on this website?

Here’s what  you do:   On the opening page of my website, in the red bar at the top, click on “Alice Series.”   You’ll land on the “Alice” page.  Scroll down to the words “Books in order.”   The last three books shown are the three boxed sets:  Alice in Elementary;  The Middle School Days; High School and Beyond.  If you click on any one of them, you will see the titles of all the books in that collection.  If you buy all three collections (and my website lists the places that sell them) you will have all 28 books, from “Starting with Alice” to “Now I’ll Tell You Everything.”

 

Questions about Alice

i live in california and am 13 years old. I recently reread the very first Alice book (Starting with Alice), and realized that i had forgotten how much I had enjoyed this book reading it as a fourth grader. I was so surprised when I found out that there were more books in this series. I had heard of them before but never knew that there were so many books. I have been looking for some interesting books to read while I am stuck at home. My question is: how did/when/ where did you get inspiration for Alice and her story? And what happened to Oatmeal the kitten and how did she die? How did Alice’s mother die? Thank you so much! Excited to hear back.

 

Don’t you want to read the series and find out the answers for yourself?  I can’t remember how Oatmeal died, frankly.  Alice’s mother died of cancer, I believe.  I started the Alice series because I thought it would be interesting to follow the life of a girl who is looking for a role model, someone to take her Mom’s place.  And gradually all the other stuff came to me–friends, brother, dad, Aunt Sally etc.  I wrote one book a year for 28 years, so you have a lot of reading to look forward to.