Alice, I Think

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Alice MacLeod, 15, of Smithers, British Columbia, is not a typical
heroine of young-adult fiction. Recalling the comic style of Sue
Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13ѕ (1989), Alice,
through dated journal entries from August 1 to October 6, episodically
shares the people and happenings found in the “wonderland” of
adolescence. Laments Alice: “Why does my life always feel like one
long most embarrassing moment?”

After three years of counseling at Smithers Teens in Transition (Not in
Trouble) Centre, Alice, having burned out one counselor, has been
assigned another, and, in a strange role reversal, she is determined to
help this counselor-in-training succeed. Consequently, Alice creates a
list of Life Goals, the number increasing and decreasing as she adds,
deletes, and reinstates goals. In the main, Alice’s goals are those
typical developmental tasks all teens must achieve, but Alice is not
average. Academically gifted, she was advanced a grade ahead of her
peers in school; however, being socially delayed, she now finds herself
in an alternative school with an oddball collection of students and
teachers.

Humor is readily found in situations and especially in the large cast
of teen and adult characters, whom Alice skewers with the adolescent’s
critical eye that readily identifies faults in others. Though the novel
lacks an “ending,” readers will likely agree with Alice’s
concluding self-assessment: “I had achieved practically every single
Life Goal a person my age could be expected to attempt.”

The book’s audience is somewhat difficult to identify. Alice’s age
would indicate junior high, but the content, which frequently has
readers laughing “at” rather than “with” the protagonist, would
suggest upper high-school grades when such embarrassing happenings are
usually comfortably behind the readers. Recommended.