You are holding in your hands a real treasure, my friend—the diary of my sixth-grade year. The year my eight-year-old sister and I were in the same class at school. The year I had to babysit my siblings (in New York City!!!), say good-bye to my BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD, and deal with that annoying Jack Bersner following me everywhere. The year I broke my arm, got a dog, and had a part in the worst school play in the history of the world (Well, okay, maybe in the history of our school). So yeah, enjoy reading about all my secrets! -Allisen Zepetto, 6th grade I started the Allisen's Notebooks series when I was eleven years old. I would take about four sheets of printer paper, fold them in half, and staple them together to make a book. Over the next nine years, I ended up writing 47 books in the Allisen's Notebooks series, plus six Super Specials (books that took place simultaneously with one of the Allisen's Notebooks, but that were written in other characters' perspectives). I had a plan to write 60 Allisen's Notebooks in all, plus maybe 8 or so Super Specials.  I had never originally planned to publish my Allisen's Notebooks. They were just for me, to begin with. But as time went on, I realized, what was the point of that? They were fun stories, and I thought people other than me would enjoy them as well.  The books were too short to each be their own novel. I decided to combine each year of Allisen's life--each set of 12 consecutive books--into one publishable novel. Of course, I needed to do some severe  editing and re-writing, because what makes perfect sense to an imagination-filled eleven-year-old doesn't always make that much sense in reality. (For example: in the original version of Book Two, "Me, A Babysitter?" Allisen's family went on a random two-week vacation to Kentucky, and Allisen had to babysit her siblings at a random Fun House while her parents both worked their two-week jobs). I kept the plots of all the books pretty similar to the original plots (with some changes to fill loopholes and have the stories make more sense), but I re-wrote the stories themselves. Some lines in the stories (such as pieces of the conversation between Jack and Allisen on pages 91-92) were copied word for word from the original books.