Naylor's Alice

Well, it is summer, and I am not glued to the computer the way I am at school, so I won't be posting as frequently.

Also, it took a while to read through 20 of the Alice books. I do like them, realistic fiction being my favorite genre. They are rather like Lenora Mattingly Weber's Beany Malone of Katie Rose books in that the main characters have an assortment of problems. Whereas Beany was concerned about necking, Alice has bigger worries. I know that these books have been challenged a lot, and I can see why. They talk about a lot of "8th grade health class issues", but the tone is so educational, dry and clinical that I can't see why people would complain. I will be a little more careful before recommending them to all and sundry, however.

Also read Garth Nix's Sabriel. Didn't much care for it. Fantasy, the undead, an Abhorsen who wants to make them stay dead while figuring out why her father is missing. I think it will be good for the students who like fantasy with a touch of evil. My son is a big fan of Nix's Seventh Tower series, so I may have to pick those up.

Zibby O'Neal's A Long Way To Go, about the women's suffrage movement circa 1917, was a good, quick historical fiction. There is a whole series of these; Once Upon America, I think.