Through intimate relationships, jobs, disastrous accidents, and accidental parental meetings, the journey from a child into a grown woman is narrated in the Alice series.
[1] Important and notable characters are Alice's three best friends, Pamela, Gwen, Elizabeth; her first love, Patrick; her aunt, Sally; her brother, Lester; and her father.
Dating, sex, friendship, familial matters, religion, and homosexuality are some of the controversial themes that Phyllis Reynolds Naylor uses to narrate the life story of Alice McKinley.
[5] In an interview with Elizabeth Devereaux in 2002, Naylor said: "I just wanted to write about a motherless girl looking for a role model who finds it not in the most beautiful teacher at school, the one she had hoped to get, but in the homeliest".
[5] Naylor's ability to narrate Alice McKinley's life as she ages across 28 books is highlighted by Edie Ching, an instructor who specializes in children's literature at the University of Maryland, who remarks: "The fact that Phyllis could write a series in which her main character went from childhood to adulthood over time — and in each book was fully realized at that particular stage of her life — shows her depth and talent as a writer".