At a time of bleak realism in YA fiction, it's great to also have a book that makes you laugh out loud about a young teenager's struggle to grow up. Not that the issues aren't serious. In eighth grade now, Alice grapples with lies, loss, loyalty, and sexual awakening, even as she worries about what to wear to the school Valentine's Day dance. She is still obsessed with getting her widowed father to marry her gorgeous ex-teacher. Like her readers, Alice wants to talk to someone about her body and her sexuality. Does everyone masturbate? What is it like to have a pelvic exam? (Deliberately outrageous, she tells her father and brother at the dinner table about the three things that the doctor says can cause wetness down there.) Is it all right to feel wet and tingly when her boyfriend Patrick kisses her? As always, the adults in her life are nearly all sympathetic, gentle, and funny. Her older brother, Lester, has the best lines, both wry and wise. When he tells her that she will get through a tough time--whether it's a bad hair day or the loss of someone she loves--she knows he is right. This tenth book in a great series reads more like a stop along the way than a complete novel, but Alice's fans will love it and wait for the next one. (Reviewed April 1, 1998)

In the tenth book in this series, thirteen-year-old Alice and her friends try to puzzle out the often confounding rules of "womanhood," discuss boys and sex, and get the lowdown on pelvic exams. Learning that life and love are full of changes--no matter how well you try to plan things--Alice continues to be a refreshingly honest character with poignantly realistic adolescent highs and lows.

Readers who have, with Alice, been waiting impatiently for her widowed father and favorite teacher, Miss Summers, to pick a date will have to wait some more; the Alice series (Outrageously Alice, 1997, etc.) continues to feature comic twists, comfortably familiar characters who still have surprises to reveal, and a plot that includes some serious issues. As she tries to decide whether to stick with boyfriend Patrick or play the field, Alice accompanies Elizabeth on her first visit to a gynecologist and gets an earful afterward, goes from the high of having Miss Summers over for Christmas to the low of hearing that she spent New Year's Eve with another man, ruminates about topics as diverse as masturbation and careers, participates in a class project designed to analyze deceptive TV commercials, and struggles to cope with Miss Summers's devastating announcement that she'll be spending the next year in England as part of a teacher exchange. Naylor continues to usher Alice, and readers, toward adolescence with this well-knit, frequently hilarious story, cemented with buckets full of information, reassurance, and common sense. (Fiction. 10-13)