Alice McKinley. Main series

Eleven-year-old, motherless Alice decides she needs a gorgeous role model who does everything right; and when placed in homely Mrs. Plotkins's class she is greatly disappointed until she discovers it's what people are inside that counts.

Alice McKinley comes home on the first day of junior high with a list of seven things about seventh grade that stink. Just about the only good thing she can think of is that she's friends with everyone. Maybe that's how to survive seventh grade-make it through the entire year with everyone liking her. That turns out to be easier said than done, when Alice gets on the wrong side of the school bully, Denise 'Mack Truck' Whitlock. But Alice's problems...

A month before eighth grade begins, Alice realizes she is going to have to face something she's been afraid of forever. Everybody, she knows, is afraid of something: elevators, dogs, planes, spiders ... but her fear is worse. It's going to bring absolute disaster to the rest of her summer, maybe to the rest of her life. The truth is she's afraid of deep water! It's a hot August, and everyone in Alice's gang goes to Mark Stedmeister's swimming pool...

Alice is starting high school, and everything is new. But it's the new girl, Penny, who's making ninth grade a real challenge for Alice. Penny is tiny and perky and a real flirt, and she seems to be focusing her attention on Patrick. Even worse, Patrick seems to be enjoying it. Alice and Patrick have been a couple so long, Alice can't imagine life without him. Suddenly she feels lost and unattractive and scared-not quite whole. How can Alice get...

As Alice McKinley begins a new phase as a student at the University of Maryland, College Park, she experiences many changes, both expected and surprising, that lead her into a future her seventh-grade self could only have imagined.