Alice By Accident

Nine-year-old Alice must write about herself for a school assignment, and in doing so, she sorts out her feelings about her somewhat prickly single mother, the father she has never met, her flamboyant paternal grandmother and the rest of her sometimes confusing life.

Alice doesn’t see how she can write her life story as a class assignment.. How can she fit nine years into a couple of pages? Her pets have died and the only family she has is her mother. Until recently she had a beloved interfering grandmother – Gene – but she’s gone from Alice’s life. Besides, Alice discovered ages ago she was born by accident, and that’s the sort of private thing you don’t write about for school. Alice does the assignment but she thinks it’s boring, until she discovers a need to write about her true life – the exciting, complicated and private of her life. She writes how Gene came along, how she changed Alice’s life, making it richer in experience but also more complicated. She records ongoing quarrels between Gene and her mother which ended with the Big Row and now she can’t see Gene any more.

Lynne Reid Banks has written a truly compelling story of a creative child caught in the middle of a difficult but very real and increasingly common situation.

Reviews

Praise for The Indian in the Cupboard

‘An assured piece of story-telling, well able to stand comparison with older classics.”
Times Educational Supplement

“Enthralling and hair-raising reading.” TLS

“The Key to the Indian is a swiftly-moving, tightly-plotted, exciting, funny tale, which will keep the reader firmly hooked and frantically turning the pages.” Carousel

Praise for The Secret of the Indian

“There have been many famous stories in which children’s toys come alive: this book is in the same great tradition.” School Library Association

About the author

Lynne Reid Banks was born in London in 1929. She was an actress in the early 1950s and later became one of the first two women TV News reporters in Britain. She is a best-selling author for both children and adults, and has written over thirty books, including The L-Shaped Room.

Lynne Reid Banks has three grown-up sons and lives in Dorset and London with her sculptor husband, Chaim Stephenson.