Plans

           A lot of times, people will make a plan for the future, but life gets in the way of their plans. This definitely happens in "Alice in the Know" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. In this book, which is part of the "Alice" series, Alice McKinley has a lot of plans. She has lived in a very sheltered world, and in the beginning, she believes that her life is going to stay the same. She plans to work at her dad's  music store, gather at the pool with her closest friends, and get to know her brother Lester's girlfriend Tracy better during the summer before 11th grade. However, all her plans fall through. Her dad decides that she should get a job somewhere else besides the music store so she can have more work experience, and she ends up at a department store, where she has to work hard to keep up with the other employees and to catch shoplifters. Her friends begin to drift apart as her friend Patrick is very focused on academics, while her friends Brian and Mark aren't being so nice to her and are making bad choices. Tracy turns down Lester's marrige proposal and decides not to see him anymore.

         "Alice in the Know" shows a lot about how life is not the way we expect it is going to be. The "Alice" books are about an average girl growing up and facing challenges, and I think that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor does a good job of making Alice realistic.