Nice interview with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor in the Washington Post on Sunday. Reynolds talks about the mail she gets from the readers of her Alice books.

...I get about 20 to 30 letters a day. Most of these kids have read the Alice books and ask very personal questions. They tell me things that they can't ask their parents. I hear from girls that have been having sex for a long time, girls who are 17 years old and never been kissed, never gone on a date, and are afraid that they'll never, ever get married. One girl wants to go with an Indian guy, but she's doing it behind her mother's back.

...At first I thought, I can't handle this. But then I thought, I'm getting as much from them as they are from me. It just tells me what topics are important to them.

I am embarking on a read of the Alice books. Apparently the mere presence of these books on some library shelves sends certain parents over the bend. I am anxious to see what is so d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s about the series.

To believe these folks, the books are the root of all e-v-i-l. Hard to believe a book sitting quietly on the shelf in a middle school will cause a boy in tech ed to cut his finger on a band saw or cause vocabulary words to fall out of students' brains before a test but apparently some parents believe these books have mystical powers that will ruin the lives of all chidren.

Well, I'll see. I will bravely risk the lives of my family in this endeavor.