What To Do About Alice?

What To Do About Alice? :

How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove her Father Teddy Crazy! 

by Barbara Kerley

illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham

 

Barbara Kerley has written 13 books for children and young adults, including picture books about Mark Twain, Waterhouse Hawkins, Alice Roosevelt, Walt Whitman, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Edwin Fotheringham has done illustrations for CD and record covers, Neiman Marcus ads, magazines, fiction books and children's books. What To Do About Alice has been recognized with the following honors and awards: Sibert Honor Book, ALA Notable Book, Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, the Irma Black Award Honor Book, the Parents Choice Award and the Washington State Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award.

What To Do About Alice? is a biography of Alice Roosevelt. The reader watches Alice grow from a small child into a married woman, while her father Teddy struggles with how to handle her colorful personality. She refuses to attend boarding school, joins an all-boys club, brings a pet snake to the White House, allows her name to be all over the press, gets a song written about her, gets a color named after her, was caught betting on a horse race, drover her own car while other women rode in carriages, and takes adventurous rendezvous over the world including Hawaii, China and Japan.

Kerley uses phrases like "eating up the world," "hungry to go places," and "voraciously," to describe Alice's desire to see and do everything she possibly could. Alice's independence shines bright through the text and I love the lines: "She watched the students of Miss Spence's boarding school walk oh-so-primly down the sidewalk. That didn't look like much fun to Alice. She wanted to own a pet monkey and wear pants." Those lines sum her up perfectly! 

The best part about this book is the hilarious illustrations. Fotheringham shows Alice jumping on the sofa, hanging upside down next to a monkey, riding a bike with her feet on the handle bars, sulking on her bed in a messy room, waving to the adorning crowd with her father next to her giving her a frustrated look, and doing the hula in Hawaii. My favorite illustration is of Alice and her step-siblings laughing and racing down the White House stairs and the text says "Alice tried to be helpful. She watched her younger brothers and sisters so her stepmother could get some rest." 

Professional Reviews for What To Do About Alice?

• Publishers Weekly: "Debut illustrator Fotheringham creates the perfect mood from the start: his stylish digital art sets a fast pace, making use of speed lines and multiple vignettes to evoke characters in perpetual motion. His compositions wittily incorporate headlines, iconic images and plenty of Alice blue, too."
• Booklist:  "invigorating look at larger-than-life Alice."

• School Library Journal: " This book provides a fascinating glimpse into both a bygone era and one of its more interesting denizens as well as a surefire antidote for any child who thinks that historical figures are boring."

Books by Barbara Kerley

Interview with Barbara Kerley 

About Edwin Fotheringham

Kerley Barbara. What to Do About Alice? : How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drover her Father Teddy Crazy! New York: Scholastic Press, 2008. 

ISBN 0-439-92231-3

$14.52 at Barnes & Noble

Work consulted: Vardell, Sylvia M. Children's Literature in Action: A Librarian's Guide. Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2008.