The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Author:Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: GR, fiction
ISBN: 9780689311437
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Cleaned Mrs. Plotkin’s cupboard

Was polite to Marilyn

Was kind to Lester

For the first time, the “Forward” column was ahead.

On December first, Mrs. Plotkin collected our journals to see how we were doing. All but a few pages of mine were paper-clipped together. I didn’t want her to read about Donald Sheavers. I didn’t want her to know about my seeing Patrick in his underwear, either. I certainly didn’t want her to read about how disappointed I was that I didn’t get Miss Cole for a teacher. The only other things I let her read were about how upset my father got when I confused memories of Momma with Aunt Sally, how I felt about Marilyn breaking up with Lester, and what happened on Halloween.

We had to read fifteen pages in our social studies books that afternoon, and while we were reading, Mrs. Plotkin checked through our journals. I kept lifting my eyes to see when she got to mine. All the journals looked alike on the outside, but mine was the only one with paper clips holding the pages together.

Mrs. Plotkin picked it up at last. She skipped over the paper-clipped pages and read the others slowly, taking her time. I squirmed. I was glad when she went on to someone else’s journal.

At two thirty, Mrs. Plotkin read to us aloud. She had finished Sounder and a book called The Incredible Journey, and just before Thanksgiving had started Watership Down. We were already on chapter five:

“‘It was getting on toward moonset when they left the fields and entered the wood. Straggling, catching up with one another, keeping more or less together, they had wandered over half a mile down the fields, always following the course of the brook. … ’”

No matter what happened to me during the day, the half hour at the end, when Mrs. Plotkin read to us, helped make up for it. When she read, her voice made pictures of the words. She read with such expression that we knew instantly what a character was feeling. The first week I was in her class, I had pretended I was doing my homework all the while she was reading. She never said anything, never paused in icy silence the way some teachers would have done. She simply read, and let the words lure me to the story. It seemed to me now impossible that I could have been so rude. It also seemed a shame that someone as kind as Mrs. Plotkin had to be so homely. Life is unfair, I scribbled on my desktop.

As usual, when the bell rang at three, the whole class groaned in dismay that the story was interrupted. But Mrs. Plotkin smiled as she closed the book. “We’ll hear some more tomorrow,” she promised. Then she handed back our journals.

I stood at my desk for a moment, thumbing through the pages to see if all the paper clips were still there. And suddenly my eye caught something that Mrs. Plotkin had written in the margin.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.