What To Do About Alice?
Bibliography
Kerley, Barbara, and Edwin Fotheringham.
Kerley, Barbara, and Edwin Fotheringham.
What to do about Alice?
New York, Scholastic Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-439-92231-9
Plot Summary
This informational story is about the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, Alice. Alice was an adventurer since her childhood. She was energetic and an outspoken free spirit. Alice was a happy kid who could not be contained. She was a wild child but fun. Anyone who owned snakes and monkeys as pets is cool and fun to me. President Roosevelt famously said about his daughter, "I can be president of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both." The author focused on her childhood through her adult marriage. The large, colorful illustrations by Fotheringham add to the biography of this fun young girl. This woman could not be tamed by marriage and became her father's most trusted adviser.
Plot Summary
This informational story is about the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, Alice. Alice was an adventurer since her childhood. She was energetic and an outspoken free spirit. Alice was a happy kid who could not be contained. She was a wild child but fun. Anyone who owned snakes and monkeys as pets is cool and fun to me. President Roosevelt famously said about his daughter, "I can be president of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both." The author focused on her childhood through her adult marriage. The large, colorful illustrations by Fotheringham add to the biography of this fun young girl. This woman could not be tamed by marriage and became her father's most trusted adviser.
Critical Analysis
The book starts off by viewing Alice as a problem. It hooks the young reader into the desire to be an adventurer. The book follows a sequence of Alice from a young age to her adult years as a married woman. The illustrations in the book are fun and colorful. They represent the free spirit that Alice was and are used along with the text to make the images come to life. The level of reading is appropriate for a young audience and the selection of details appeals to the young reader.
The book was whimsical and a joy to read. The text used is simple and allows kids to be engaged and entertained with the reading. The illustrations are vibrant and colorful and capture the facial expressions very well. Readers must read the inside of the back cover which has the author’s notes including more facts about Alice, and further reading ideas.
Awards & Review Excerpts
California Collections
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
Booklist - starred review: “Irrepressible Alice Roosevelt gets a treatment every bit as attractive and exuberant as she was….The large format gives Fotheringham, in his debut, plenty of room for spectacular art.”
Horn Book: “What to do about Alice? Enjoy!”
School Library Review: “Kerley’s text gallops along with a vitality to match her subject’s antics, as the girl greets White House visitors accompanied by her pet snake, refuses to let leg braces cramp her style, dives fully clothed into a ship’s swimming pool, and also earns her place in history as one of her father’s trusted advisers…Fascinating.”
Connections
Create a collaged bucket list of things to do in life with the zeal and zest that Alice had for life!
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