Alice-by-Accident (An Avon Camelot Book) - Hardcover

Banks, Lynne Reid

3.29

80 ratings by Goodreads

9780380978656: Alice-by-Accident (An Avon Camelot Book)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380978652 ISBN 13: 9780380978656

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2000

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It's Just so stupid, asking us to write our life for homework. It's not even a weekend!

Alice Williamson-Stone doesn't see how she can write her life story as a class assignment. How can she fit 9 1/2 years into a couple of pages? Anyway, what's interesting in her life is not the "family and pets" stuff her teacher asked for. Her pets have died, and the only family she has is her mother. Until recently she had a beloved, interfering grandmother--Gene--but she's gone from Alice's life. Besides, as Alice discovered ages ago, she was born by accident, and that's the sort of private thing you don't write about for school. Alice does the assignment but she thinks it's pretty boring, until in doing it she discovers a need to write about her true life--the exciting, complicated, private parts.

In her secret notebook, Alice begins to write her"{ilustrated} ortoblography." Alice writes about her mother's difficult early life and her determination to become a "professional single parent." She writes how Gene, her absent father's mother, came along, and how she changed Alice's life, making it richer in experience but also more complicated. And she records on going quarrels between her mother and grandmother about how to bring Alice up, which ended with the Big Row. Now Alice has just her Number One person, her mum, struggling with problems of money, career, health, where to live, and how to manage on her own--problems Alice can only deal with by writing about them. Except when she tries to help . .

Lynne Reid Banks offers a compelling story of a creative child caught in the middle of a difficult, but very real and increasingly common situation. Poignant, funny, and startlingly honest, Alice-by-Accident is certain to touch the heart of any child who has ever felt different, and of any adult who has to deal with the problems of children who come by accident.

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Review:

Writing convincingly in a young person's voice poses a huge challenge even to an experienced author like Lynne Reid Banks (The Indian in the Cupboard and others)--probably second only to writing in authentic-sounding dialect. Banks manages to do both brilliantly in the public and private notes of almost-10-year-old Alice Elizabeth Williamson-Stone, a sensitive, quirky British girl being raised by her struggling single mom. Alice dutifully reports her name in the first line of the book as part of an autobiography in her School Notebook, which continues throughout. But we soon learn that much of the turmoil in her world revolves around that name's origins. In her private Special Notebook, Alice later describes meeting her grandmother Gene at the age of three: "She rang Mum (in Brighton this was) and they had a row straight off because Williamson-Stone is on my birth certificate.... Gene said I had no right to that name because Mum wasn't married to my dad and she said Mum'd stolen it. Of course that's stupid, you can't steal a name... she could've called me Alice Pok�mon or Alice Peanut Butter Sandwich." Alice's strong accent and idiosyncratic language can be a bit off-putting until you get to know her, but patience pays off, and the contrast makes her recounting of The Simpsons and Oprah Winfreythat much better.

Pulled between loving but strong-willed parental figures with their own complicated histories (and she hasn't even met her dad yet), Alice must find her way despite a rocky home life, an unexpected and emotional move, and the usual demands of a difficult age. But she shines through it all as a stalwart, likable, and--most importantly for middle-school readers--believable heroine. (Ages 9 and 12) --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

Lynne Reid Banks is a bestselling author for both children and adults. She grew up in London and became first an actress and then one of the first woman TV reporters in Britain before turning to writing. She now has more than forty books to her credit. Her classic children's novel, The Indian in the Cupboard, has sold more than ten million copies worldwide and was made into a popular feature film. Lynne lives with her husband in Dorset, England.

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