What To Do About Alice? - Barbara Kerley

Illustrator: Edwin Fotheringham
For: Early/Middle Grades
Pub: 2008
Rating: 3.5/5
Read: Aug. 26, 2008

Subtitle: How ALICE ROOSEVELT broke THE RULES, charmed THE WORLD, and drove her FATHER TEDDY CRAZY!

In this picture book biography of Alice Roosevelt, we learn about her upbringing, her energy, her mischieviousness, and her spirit. She sounds like a character that was hard to control, much to the dismay of her father, Teddy, the 26th president of the United States. Both the style in which it is written ( lots of capital letters, italics, and bold print) and illustrations (at least nine of them use dotted lines to show frenetic movement and energy) show something about her do-anything personality. ADHD, maybe?

This is a picture book, and although the illustrations work really well and add tremendously to the story, I'm just not crazy about Fotheringham's style. I DO like that he uses the entire page, leaving virtually no negative space, and the illustration of Alice "losing" herself in the library is quite cool.

Quotation marks are used throughout the text, so I'd say that Kerley researched well and chose many of Teddy and Alice's own words, or quoted from someone else's writing about them. This would be a good model for students.

Sometimes it's stupid little things that bother me....the front end pages contain the title page and the back end pages add interesting Author's Notes, BUT the library has (of course) firmly taped down the flaps so that I can not read everything without damaging something. I decided not to. How disappointing not to find out about "The Other Washington Monument", which I think tells about the years after Alice's husband's death.