Life, Alice Mc Kinley feels, is just one big embarrassment.
Alice moves on, ready to be a wise teenager..
Out of all this, to her amazement, comes a role model -- one that she would never have accepted before she made a few very important discoveries on her own, things no roadmap could have shown her.
And she meets an aunt and a female cousin whom she has not really known before.
Plotkin.
She also comes to know the lovely Miss Cole, as well as Mrs.
Through the school year, Alice has lots to record.
Alice calls hers "The Agony of Alice," and in it she records all the embarrassing things that happen to her.
Plotkin\'s first assignments is for each member of the class to keep a journal of their thoughts and feelings.
One of Mrs.
Plotkin.
Unfortunately, she draws the homely, pear-shaped Mrs.
If only she finds herself, when school begins, in the classroom of the beautiful sixth-grade teacher, Miss Cole, her troubles will be over.
What do they know about being a teen age girl? What she needs, Alice decides, is a gorgeous woman who does everything right, as a roadmap, so to speak.
Help and advice can only come from her father, manager of a music store, and her nineteen-year-old brother, who is a slob.
Her mother has been dead for years.
It\'s worse for her than for anyone else, she believes, because she has no role model.
Here she is, about to be a teenager and she doesn\'t know how.
Life, Alice Mc Kinley feels, is just one big embarrassment
