Katherine Collette, Out of Bounds (The Too-Tall Tales of Alma T. Best #1), HarperCollins Children’s Books, September 2024, 336 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781460765388
Six-foot-tall Alma T. Best (the T stands for Thelma) lives with her two sisters and parents in the small fictional country town of Shellsville, which Alma dubs “Smellsville” because of its adjacent sewage farm. While her Shellsville mates aspire to go to nearby Point Elizabeth public high school, Alma has won – albeit by default – a scholarship to all-girls college Holy Grace. Her mum gives her a pair of size 11 runners as a congratulatory gift: the inciting incident for the main narrative thrust of this comic middle-grade novel, which is how a non-athletic, non-basketball-interested 12-year-old becomes a basketball heroine.
Alma is smart, resourceful, and well-read, but her Achilles Heel is her propensity to make stuff up. She’s embarrassed about living in Shellsville, so she tells her new Holy Grace friends she really lives on a faraway peach farm. When her school mates volunteer to produce peach jam for a Mother’s Day stall, Alma’s lies come thicker and faster to worm her way out of their knowing the truth. So too come engineered contrivances such as stealing already-made jam from the school pantry. She even lies to family members about being a member of the Holy Grace basketball team because older sister Alice is in the Shellsville basketball squad and Alma doesn’t want to show her up.
Of course, Alma’s journey is all about trying to fit in: to make and keep friendships and truly belong as one of the team. Author Katherine Collette knows all too well the angst of pre-pubescent girls and the lengths they will go to for acceptance. And she’s created a protagonist the reader can care about as Alma comically weaves a path from one fabrication to another until she can find her longed-for acceptance.
There is a haplessness about Alma, which makes her very endearing. And Collette’s cartoon drawings threaded throughout are fun and clever. Whilst the ending and Alma’s redemption feel a bit too neat and easy, the story clips along at a lively pace that will keep middle grade readers engaged to the end.
Reviewed by Suzanne Ingelbrecht
