Come and meet Alice. Here she is on the brink of being a teenager and discovering that life is just one big embarrassment.

Things are not made any easier by the fact that she has no female role model - Alice's mother died when she was four - so there is just her father and older brother - and what could they possibly know about being a girl and growing up?

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's lively, witty style, mixed with poignance and perception, has captured the essence of adolescent anxieties as we follow Alice through the trials and tribulations of growing up.

Life, Alice feels, can sometimes be just so embarrassing.

Here she is, about to be a teenager and she doesn't know how. And it's worse for her as she doesn't have anybody to ask.

Alice's mother died when she was four so help and advice can only come from her father and nineteen year old brother, who is a slob!

What do they know about being a girl and growing up!

Through a series of incidents both hilarious and poignant, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's lively, witty style captures the essence of adolescent anxieties as Alice searches for a female role model to help with all those awkward questions that go hand in hand with growing up.