To Tell You the Truth
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
An utterly charming, “gorgeous” (Booklist) Southern-voiced middle grade novel about a young girl and the adventure she embarks upon to prove her Gran’s stories were true. Perfect for fans of The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair and Three Times Lucky.
Trixy needs a story, fast, or she’s going to fail the fourth grade—that’s a fact. But every time she sits down to write, her mind is a blank. The only stories she can think of are Gran’s, the ones no one else ever believed but Trixy gulped down like sweet tea. Gran is gone now, buried under the lilac bush in the family plot, so it’s not like Trixy’s hurting anybody to claim one of those stories as her own, is she?
That stolen story turns out to be a huge success, and soon everybody in town wants Trixy to tell them a tale. Before long, the only one left is the story she vowed never to share, the one that made Gran’s face cloud up with sadness. Trying to find a way out of this tangled mess, Trixy and her friend Raymond hit the road to follow the twists and turns of Gran’s past. Maybe then Trixy can write a story that’s all her own, one that’s the straight-up truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ever since her grandmother Dolcie B. Jacobs died in a car accident six months before the events of this book begin, fourth grader Trixy Mae Williams has struggled with school as her parents disappear into their own grief. Internalizing Gran's rich oral storytelling, Trixy puts the tales to paper, despite Gran's explicit instruction not to share them, and turns them in as her own—only to get punished for fibbing, as her teacher urges Trixy to use her natural storytelling gift to write "true" stories. When Trixy's best friend Raymond's father, a traveling musician, prepares to embark on a Tennessee-wide tour that auspiciously follows Gran's pre-death plans, Trixy is desperate to go to "places like Memphis, where the music comes from every corner, draping like a blanket of sound to tuck in the town," despite the disheartening roadblocks that materialize. Vrabel (the Newspaper Club series) offers a sympathetic majority white cast against a rich Tennessee setting; employing Trixy's lively Southern voice and evocative descriptions to dig through her bramble of conflicting emotions, this cathartic narrative nimbly explores love, grief, revival, and what makes a tale true. Ages 8–12.
