In the long-running series of books covering the life of Alice McKinley, Reluctantly Alice details one of the most transformative periods of her young life—of almost everyone's young life. The book covers the first semester of Alice’s entry into the faster-paced world of middle school. Since Alice lives in one of those strange districts and/or attended school in the past, this means that the book covers her adventures in seventh grade rather than sixth grade which marked the end of her elementary school career.
Alice has just one all-encompassing goal for seventh grade: to become Alice the Likeable. She has set for herself the considerable mission of literally being liked by everyone in the school. The first day does not bode well: she proceeds to sit on a doughnut, slip on steps, and squirt water on a teacher. As if that weren’t bad enough, she also finds herself seated in the front row of her World Studies teacher, Mr. Hensley, notable not only for excruciatingly bad breath but for spitting whenever he says a word with an “s” in it. The only way things could get worse is if she developed a nemesis for no reason at all.
Enter Denise “Mack Truck” Whitlock, leader of a gang of tough girls who takes an instant dislike to the girl who just wants to be most liked for no particular reason. Although she shares a few classes with Alice, Denise is an eighth-grade force to repeat some classes. After a few unpleasant run-ins with Denise, things appear headed for some sort of really unpleasant climax when her nemesis quietly but menacingly says just four letters: “SGSD.” This turns out to stand for Seventh Grade Sing Day, a weird bullying ritual in which upperclassmen students can force any seventh grader to stop and sing the school song at their command. Failure to respond to this command means a trip to the nearest bathroom and a swirly in the toilet.
Meanwhile, Alice and the boy who gave her her first kiss over the summer, Patrick, are finding a way to make not being able to sit next to each other in their only class a little more bearable. They start passing notes containing mean cartoon drawings of Mr. Hensley focusing on his bad hygiene. Unfortunately, one of these notes soars wildly out of control and lands just in front of the teacher as he is making his way back to his desk. The look on his face is something that neither can get out of their head and they commit to making it up to a teacher who is remarkable for his only singular commitment to never embarrassing or humiliating his students by giving their all to a student project about the Russian Revolution that requires decorating the classroom on the sly. When Mr. Hensley sees the effort they have put into their project, he is overcome by emotion. The project also becomes a must-see for everybody else in school.
Since they don’t share many classes, Alice’s tight-knit duo of best friends, Elizabeth and Pamela, are not exactly major players in this installment. At least not until near the end when what would come to be known as the “Bubbles” incident occurs. Last summer, the three girls—still a long way from the more mature world of middle school where eight and ninth-grade girls with actual breasts casually walked topless in the locker room from the shower to their lockers—posed for a picture in the tub together while enjoying the goofy pleasures of a communal bubble bath. Although nothing untoward can be seen, the sharing of the photos among middle school boys causes a commotion which temporarily puts a most unexpected obstacle in the way of Alice becoming the most likable girl in school: at different points, both Elizabeth and Pamela get mad enough over differing consequences of the Bubbles photo to seemingly put both friendships in jeopardy. A couple of heartfelt apologies puts an end to that madness, however.
What will turn out to be the most long-lasting impact of entering middle school will not become apparent until later in the series, but it commences with this installment. Alice becomes entranced by the blue-green eyes of her Language Arts teacher, Miss Summers, which actually at times match the dominant colors of her wardrobe. So bewitched is Alice by the eyes of Miss Summers (and her velvety reading voice and her engaging scent courtesy of Calvin Klein’s Obsession) that she is even able on occasion to forget that the dreaded Denise Whitlock is a classmate. So bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by Miss Summers is Alice that with the coming of Christmas break, she is suddenly moved to act without really thinking things through and extends an invitation to her teacher: “My dad and I wondered if you would like to go with us to the Messiah Sing-Along.” The problem is that her dad is no more aware that this invitation has been made on his behalf than Miss Summers has that it was not.
Things have a way of working out for Alice, however, and this leap of her particular type of insanity will prove to be successful in ways she never imagined as that awkward Christmastime date will eventually lead to Miss Summers becoming Alice’s stepmother. But that is all in the future. In the here and now, Miss Summers will play a major part in something else that Alice never imagined: thanks to an assignment requiring Alice and Denise to interview each other and write up the results, what each girl learns about the other results in a bona fide Christmas miracle of the former sworn enemies becoming friends.
