There's a lot about growing up that's confusing to Alice McKinley. Her mother died when she was four - how can her father and her nineteen-year-old brother, Lester, teach her what she needs to know? Even buying a pair of jeans can turn into a major embarrassment with Lester in charge.

If only she had a role model, like the beautiful sixth-grade teacher Miss Cole. But instead Alice gets assigned to plain, pear-shaped Mrs. Plotkin's class. Is Alice doomed to a life of one embarrassment after another?