Module 15: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

Bibliographic Citation: Anonymous, Go Ask Alice. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1971.

Plot Summary:

Alice is a fifteen year old girl that begins to keep to a journal of her life and her feelings.  In her journal, Alice begins by writing about the things that worry her, such as wether her crush likes her or not, and her concern over her weight.  Then, her father who is a college professor, accepts a job in a new city and the family moves.  Alice doesn't quite adjust to the move and during the summer she stays with her gradnparents.  It is during this summer that Alice is introduced to drugs and her life changes.   

At first Alice tries LSD without knowing it, but she had a a good experience and enjoyed it.  Even though Alice promises herself never to try drugs again, she eventually falls into them, trying various different drugs.  With the drug use came a different Alice, and she began to do things she later worried about, such as having unprotected sex and then being worried about being pregnant.  Later, Alice and a friend decide to run away, and she continues her drug use.  Eventually they ran out of money and she stopped doing drugs, and eventually went back home, where her family welcomed her.  Just when life seemed to be looking positive, Alice stopped writing in her journal.

My Impressions of the Book:

I must admit, I love and I hate this book.  I love the book because it's so interesting and I found myself in Alice's world, so much so that I was sad when Alice seemed to hit rock bottom, then happy when she changed her life around.  It felt like an emotional roller coaster, and it was all very sad because the drug addiciton is so real in our society today.  Through the book you can see how drug abuse can really destroy lives.  The part I hate about this book is when the entries stopped and Alice dies!  I was so upset, it just didnt seem fair that when her life seemed to be falling into place and she was finally happy, she stopped writing. 

Review(s) About the Book:

American Library Association

Texas Middle School
Removes Go Ask Alice

The Aledo, Texas, school board voted June 14 to remove Go Ask Alice from the middle school library, and to require parental consent for students to borrow it from the high school library.
Following a parent’s complaint about the 1970s-era diary of a teen-age girl’s destructive experience with drugs and sex, the middle school’s screening committee decided to limit the book to students whose parents had given them permission to read it. The parent, dissatisfied with the decision, then went to the school board. Board President Steve Reid, who told the June 15 Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had not read the book and has no intentions of doing so, said it should also be removed from the high school library.
Aledo Middle School Principal Bob Harmon told the Freedom Forum’s Web site that Go Ask Alice “was one of our most popular books.” Noting that the process leading up to the school board’s vote had been long and tedious, Harmon said, “Censoring books is a really difficult issue.”
Posted June 28, 1999.

Wilson Web

AUTHOR:	LAUREN ADAMS
TITLE:	A Second Look: Go Ask Alice
SOURCE:	The Horn Book 74 no5 587-92 S/O '98

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.
    Published in 1971 by Prentice-Hall, Go Ask Alice spread like wildfire among teen readers as soon as it appeared as an Avon paperback--"more than four million copies sold," touts the current Aladdin paper edition. Conjuring all the pulsating power of the Jefferson Airplane rock song from which it borrowed its name, Go Ask Alice gave an insider's look at the simultaneously glamorous and frightening world of drugs. As a curious pre-teen, I lapped up the "real diary" of this anonymous fifteen-year-old, eager to learn of the thrill and lure of those forbidden substances from the smugly satisfying position of not sharing Alice's fate (and of suddenly "getting" what Grace Slick was singing about).
    My motives were not as lofty as those of the critics who strongly recommended the book when it first appeared. Knowing that many parents (and teachers and librarians) would be uncomfortable with the subject matter--and the vulgar language--of the book, the Christian Science Monitor implored, "Precisely because of this reluctance to expose one's children to such material ... the book must be read." From Library Journal: "This diary depicts all the confusion, loneliness and rebellion associated with adolescence.... Unlike other 'true-to-life' stories, this is true (it's based on an actual diary). An important book, this deserves as wide a readership as libraries can give it." And Publishers Weekly recommended the book as an "eloquent look at what it must be like to be in the vortex" of drug use. However, PW was, it seems, the only source at the time to question the book's authenticity: "Maybe we're all too cynical on that subject these days, but it does seem awfully well written, and in any case brilliantly edited."
    But most readers accepted the book for what it claims to be--a real diary by an anonymous teen. The question of authenticity was raised again only when Alleen Pace Nilsen interviewed Beatrice Sparks for School Library Journal in October 1979, after seeing Sparks listed on the cover of a new book as "the author who brought you Go Ask Alice." Nilsen's article, "The House That Alice Built," depicts Sparks in a less than flattering light as a purported youth counselor with sketchy qualifications. Nilsen relates Sparks's claim that she compiled the book from diaries given her by a young girl she befriended but added other incidents and ideas from similar cases. Nilsen concludes, "The question of how much of Go Ask Alice was written by the real Alice and how much by Beatrice Sparks can only be conjectured." (In a letter to SLJ Sparks later defended not only the book's credentials and her own but the decor of her house, which also came under attack in the article.)

For full review check link:

http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2211/hww/results/results_single_fulltext.jhtml;hwwilsonid=TZ1HI4HOIEIDPQA3DILSFGOADUNGIIV0

Use in Library Setting:

This book can be put on display for various reasons on different occasions.  For example, if a display on books written in a journal format are diplayed then this book can be used.  This book can also be displayed during Banned Books week.  Lastly, if a library is having an event on drug prevention or teen social issues, then this book would be perfect for the display. 

Module 14: Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Bibliographic Citation: Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Make Lemonade. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.

Plot Summary:

Fourteen year old LaVaughn, has a goal in life, and that is to go to college.  She begins to make her goal attainable by looking for a job.  When she finds a babysitting job, she thinks it is a perfect part time job.  Seventeen year old Jolly, is a single teenage mother of two, who works the evening shift and is in need of a babysitter; and this is how LaVaughn and Jolly meet.     

LaVaughn goes to Jolly's house and she feels sorry for the kids, Jeremy and Jilly, who are dirty and live in a dirty apartment, but she takes the job.  Soon after she begin working, Jolly gets fired from her job and has no way of paying LaVaughn for babysitting.  LaVaughn encourages Jolly to go back to school and she still helps her by babysitting for free.  Eventually Jolly finds free day care for her kids and she is able to go back to high school. 

My Impressions of the Book:

This is one of those books that make you think about those less fortunate and what obstacles they face to succeed in this world.  This book takes you into the world of a young teenage mother, struggling to make something of herself and make a better life for her kids.  As you read this book, you can't help but feel sympathy for Jolly and her two kids, and you just want her to make it through all her obstacles.  Through this book you get a glimpse into the world of poverty and the underprivileged, and just when you think your life is tough, you think of Jolly and everyone she represents in this world, and you can't help but count your blessings.     

Review(s) About the Book:

School Library Journal

Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Make Lemonade. Holt. 2006. 200p. ISBN 978-0-8050-8070-4. $7.95.
Jolly is the 17-year-old mother of Jeremy and Jilly. She needs a babysitter. Enter 14-year-old LaVaughn, as street naïve as she is book smart. Together the two girls exist as a sort of family until the differences between them lead them on separate paths, each one making lemonade from the lemons in her life.
Why It Is for Us: Wolff’s free-verse style depicts the harsh realities of parenting in urban poverty with equal parts grit and grace. The reader roots for both girls and for a more hopeful future. Luckily, the book is the first in a trilogy. The story is continued in Printz Honor winner True Believer (2001) and will be completed in this year’s This Full House. [Originally published in 1993.]

Reading Matters Website

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff (1993)

This book is absolutely unforgettable. It's just a story about fourteen-year-old La Vaughn who takes on a babysitting job. She needs to work her way through school to save enough money to get through college. That's how it is in America. She means to study, to get a better job, to escape the poverty that she is growing up in.
She babysits for Jolly, a lone and inadequate, seventeen-year-old mother of two, Jeremy and Jilly. Now, the place where this little family live is absolutely disgusting. Like La Vaughn says, you really don't want to know this, but she tells you anyway. The children are filthy and deprived of all the good things in life. No decent food, no bus trips out anywhere, no learning at home, no stable basics at all. But, Jolly loves them fiercely.
Things go well enough at first. Jolly works an evening shift and La Vaughn babysits from the finish of school until late in the evening. La Vaughn works hard to look after the children and complete all her homework every night. And she takes pride in herself and her work because she's nicely brought up. She really does her best for Jeremy and Jilly. She spends time playing with them and teaching them and cleaning them and comes to love them. While Jolly is working she can afford to pay La Vaughn and La Vaughn's bank account, her own escape route, grows satisfactorily.
For full review:
http://www.readingmatters.co.uk/book.php?id=50

Use in Library Setting:

I would promote this book to specific school organizations/ clubs that raise awareness to young girls.  So, if a topic is teen pregancy, then this book can be introduced and encouraged to read so teens can see the effects of teen pregnancy.