The unforseen and sometimes hilarious consquences of lies: ‘The Too-Tall Tales of Alma T Best’ by Katherine Collette

What fun this novel is! Book One (‘Out of Bounds’) in what promises to be a captivating series for middle-grade readers, it offers plenty of genuine laugh-out-loud moments and also genuine insight into the insecurities of this age group as they transition from childhood to the teens.

Alma is twelve years old and six foot tall. She feels too-tall all the time. And she hates basketball and even more, hates being asked if she plays it.

When she begins Year 7 on a scholarship at the presitigous Holy Grace High School, she tells one little fib about where she lives. Rather than admitting she lives in Shellsville (a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and home to the district sewage treatment plant) she lets her new classmates believe that she lives on a farm – a peach farm.

A harmless little fib, right?

Except that this lie develops at shocking speed into a snowball, racing downhill at breakneck speed and threatening to demolish Alma’s whole life – and the network of subsequent lies she must tell to stop people discovering the truth about that first, harmless little fib.

She suddenly finds herself on the Holy Grace basketball team and committing to provide dozens of jars of peach jam for the school fundraiser.

The result are very amusing encounters with jam theft, basketball shoes, the bucket shot, mud masks and other assorted situations that she finds herself in. It’s a lovely tale of friends, family and fitting in.

Along the way Alma learns about lies:

The truth might be harder to tell initially but once you were through the difficult bit – and maybe parts were more difficult in your head than in actuality – it was easy, there was nothing to keep track of. Lies were the opposite: easy in the beginning and then hard. You saved face but drowned in complication. On balance, the truth seemed preferential.

The Too-Tall Tales of Alma T Best – Out of Bounds p261

Out of Bounds is published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in September 2024.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.