[.ca] The Grooming of Alice (ISBN 0689826338)

From Amazon.com:
The summer between eighth and ninth grade is looming for Alice and her friends. "It's going to be one of the most exciting summers of our lives.... All the stupid things we've ever done will be behind us, and all the wonderful stuff will be waiting to happen." First things first. The girls decide it's time to get in shape. Elizabeth tells Alice her waist is a little thick and her legs are too straight. With friends like these... They embark on a summer of discovery, with jobs, a sex-education seminar, and flirtation with an eating disorder. As Alice tests the waters of adolescence, her relationships with her father, brother, and friends are challenged. When her friend Pamela runs away from home--to Alice's house--Alice must decide where her loyalties and ethics lie. And when her father goes off to Europe, will the temptation of entertaining her boyfriend in the privacy of her home override her father's trust? Practical, lively Alice has appeared in many of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's other popular novels: Alice in Rapture, Sort Of, Alice on the Outside, and more. Her down-to-earth charm and quintessential adolescent ways will win her friends on and off the pages of the Alice series. From start to finish, readers will identify with Alice's hilarious, poignant, energetic exploits and be moved by Alice's growing maturity. Serious issues--body image, death, sex--are balanced delightfully with more lighthearted teens-in-summer issues--makeup, grounding, first tampon use. By September, the girls have definitely had an exciting summer, but not necessarily in the way they had anticipated! (Ages 10 to 14) --Emilie Coulter

The Grooming of Alice By Phyliss Reynolds:
I thought this book was an ok book because it is about a 14 year old an she was ok. Alice is a girl in the 8th grade. When there was only one week befor schoolended Alice and her friends realize that they needed to look good for highschool. So, they started excercising and by the end of the summer they started noticing some results. The only part I did not like about this book was when she kissed patrik on th eye lid.

Love at first sight with this book!!!:
This great story and makes the reader feel confident. It also makes the reader blush redder, as I have said in my other reviews of the Alice books. Some may feel it is inapropriate, but I disagree without hesitation. It's not gross, it's realistic. A lot of girls are kissing their boyfriends on eyelids--not all of them, but a lot--and the descriptions of certain body parts at the YMCA are--again--realistic, that is what is going to happen if you go to those kinds of classes and are in a pretty serious relationship. If anything, this book and all the others in the series are PREPARING girls for what is going to take place as they mature. That's my opinon. 5 Stars!!! BlEsSeD bE!!!

Kathryn ...:
The story was mostly about three girls names Alice, Pamela, and Elizabeth. The girls have known each other about three years. They have just come out of middle school and will be starting high school and decides they don't want to go into high school the same way they came out of middle school. They find so much wrong with themselves ( not so much Alice) that thye go on this diet or this excercis program together where they cut out sweets, pizza, and etc. and start jogging every morning. For Elizabeth this gets out of control and looses six pounds too much weight. While this is going on Alice and Pamela have other problems. Like, for instance Alice's summer job with her other friend named Gwen at the local hospital doing volunteer work. While at work Alice finds out that one of her sixth grade teachers is there and soon passes on. Now Pamela's mother ran off with her boyfriend to Colorado and she is also fighting with her dad. So this book is fiiled with drama. This ends when her dad decides to remarry and they are ready to go to the ninth grade. I really enjoyed this book because it deals with some of the basic problems some of us teenagers are faced with day to day. I also enjoyes this book because of the ending and the way they dealed with their problems.

It's great for what it is, but the age group is off:
People who only rate "Classics" at 5 stars are missing a point. You should take a book for what it's supposed to be and decide how well it measured up to its own goal, otherwise all children's books would be two stars or less, when for children's books they are wonderful. With that in mind, I give THE GROOMING OF ALICE four stars. It aimed to be informative, simple, cute, light and sweet, with a few morals slipped in too. It measured up to all those things quite nicely, but it lacked the creative, polished spark of Harry Potter or the beautiful writing of "Classics" such as THE GOLDEN COMPASS. The sitcom-type story is played out well and deftly in a simple, sweet prose in Alice's first person--so far, so good. But the problem (and the reason I took off a star) is that the intended reader age is not clear. SOME people think that references to sex, explicit descriptions of body parts at a YMCA class Alice and her friends attend, anorexia and kissing 14-year-old boyfriends on eyelids at neighborhood pools make this book unsuitable for the under-13 crowd. And this must be hard for Miss Naylor, to write truthfully about what goes on with teenagers without being vulgar. However, the simple writing and continuation of a younger girls' series makes this book more appealing to girls age 10 and 11. Most people think that girls that age are too young to be hearing about the above issues so candidly explained. So, read the story and decide for yourself. You'll find it passes time most enjoyably.

A book for 13 or 14 year-olds....:
I'm sorry, but this book is not a book for 12 year olds and/or people under 12. The reason why is only because the author went too far, describing body parts, the SERIOUS relationship with Patrick (excuse me, but kissing someone on the eyelids in a friend's pool at 14 is plain SICK!), and about boy-and-girl things that referred to as usually grownup relationships. So I only read half of the book because halfway through the book, Lester explained things to Alice about things that young people shouldn't know about yet. I know I'm 12, but there's some things that I and some peoples around my age would never understand that much. So the author put too much about girls ages 13 and up. So if I were you, don't bother reading it.