The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Naylor planned to work towards a master's degree in clinical psychology but decided to become a full-time author. In 1960, Naylor married Rex Naylor, a speech pathologist whom she met at church. Settling in Maryland, Naylor decided to attend American University, graduating in 1963 with a BA degree. He was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and with no hope of recovery, they divorced.

To support them, Naylor wrote and worked a series of jobs including assistant executive secretary, an elementary school teacher and eventually got a job as an editorial assistant for a magazine. Years later her husband began showing signs of severe mental illness, requiring her to seek out treatment for him all over the country. When Naylor was 18 years old, she married her first husband and they soon moved to Chicago where she worked as a clinical secretary in a university hospital. Naylor graduated from Joliet Township High School in 1951 and from Joliet Junior College in 1953. She decided to expand, sending her writing to youth magazines Highlights, Seventeen, and Jack and Jill, receiving two years of rejection letters. She wrote a baseball story named 'Mike's Hero' and was paid $4.67 for it. When she was 16 years old, a Sunday school teacher asked her to write a story for the church magazine. She began writing her own stories when she was in elementary school. Her favorite book as a child was Huckleberry Finn.

She has said that she never felt poor, as her parents had a book collection and read stories aloud to her and her siblings until adolescence. She grew up during the Great Depression with her older sister Norma and younger brother John. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in Anderson, Indiana. Naylor is best known for her children's-novel quartet Shiloh (a 1992 Newbery Medal winner) and for her 'Alice' book series, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (born January 4, 1933) is an American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction.

The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor