What To Do About Alice by Barbara Kerley

Bibliography Kerley, Barbara. WHAT TO DO ABOUT ALICE. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-439-92231-9 Plot Summary The title page of the book explains the entire premise of the book: “How Alice Roosevelt broke the rules, charmed the world, and drove her father Teddy crazy!” Kerley takes readers into the life of Alice Roosevelt and shows how grew from a precocious child into a thriving adult who helped her father in his presidency and shape the world she lived in. Teddy was not able to keep Alice contained as a child and even at the end of his time in office, he was not able to find out what to do about Alice. Critical Analysis The story itself was interesting and fun to read. I didn’t know any of the information about Alice before reading the story so I felt much more informed by the end of the book. The book itself is not long, but does have some bigger words to read. The structure of the story is chronological, introducing her and her father and then starting from Alice as a child after her mother died until she was grown up and married. There are random fun facts about Alice throughout the story like “She learned to love crusty French rolls and English tea served “piping hot”. She read voraciously and drank in Father’s tales of Davy Crockett, George Armstrong Custer, and Daniel Boone”. The font used in the book was fun and easy to read. On nearly every page, a word or phrase is in a different font in larger, bolder letters that make the story feel a little more zany like Alice. The text is built into the pictures on every page. Whether it’s written on the street next to the picture of the girls from the boarding school or in the moose head when Alice is in the library looking for books, the pictures and the text work very well together. There is a lot going on visually in the book, but I believe it is to accentuate the “outrageous” person Alice was. The drawings of Alice as she grows older are well done. She is portrayed as lively and very much her own person. One line says “Everyone loved Alice” which I think is apparent throughout the book. At one point, Alice takes her younger brothers and sister to slide down the steps inside the White House after her father becomes the president. The joy on all their faces makes it impossible to not also love Alice. To me, the only part I could not figure out is the picture on the last page of the book where Alice is walking past Mount Rushmore in what appears to be pajamas with a spoon on her shoulder that is bigger than her. All I can assume is that it is another antic that belongs to Alice – she’s running away with the spoon. Review Excerpts "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." -Booklist, December 15, 2007"Theodore Roosevelt’s irrepressible oldest child receives an appropriately vivacious appreciation in this superb picture book.... Kerley’s precise text presents readers with a devilishly smart, strong-willed girl who was determined to live life on her own terms and largely succeeded." -Kirkus, February 1, 2008"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. Fotheringham’s digitally rendered, retro-style illustrations are a superb match for the text." -School Library Journal, March 2008 Connections · Read other biographical books by Barbara Kerley: The Extraordinary Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins · Research Alice’s father, former president Teddy Roosevelt. The book touches on some of his time in the White House. Have students explore what Teddy did, his politics, his decisions, and how he got his head on Mount Rushmore.