Fiction - Social Issues, Teen Fiction - Choices & Transitions, Teen Fiction - Family & Relationships, Family & Friendship - Fiction, Fiction - Emotions & Behaviors

Tell Me Everything

Name: Tell Me Everything
Author: Coman
ISBN: 9781608980949

by Carolyn Coman

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Overview

Up until five months ago, Roz, 12, and her mother, Ellie, lived a secluded, spiritual life together in the mountains. When Ellie suddenly dies trying to rescue a lost hiker, Roz moves in with her uncle Mike, a solitary Vietnam veteran. She floats through school—it means nothing to her. Lacking her mother's religious convictions, the girl struggles to understand death and her feelings of desertion. She is driven to find the boy Ellie lost her life for, and when she does, she demands that he tell her everything he knows about the incident—which turns out to be almost nothing.
“Tell Me Everything is a remarkable achievement. The telling is very fresh and strong, and all the characters so real you feel you'd recognize them on the street.”
—Natalie Babbit

“Carolyn Coman's portrait of Roz Jacoby is extraordinary: cool, balanced, and yet possessed of a powerful momentum that knows its own direction. This is the kind of writing which reveals its own virtues. There are no shortcuts here—no easy answers—and yet how satisfying it is.”
—Brock Cole

“Quite simply, I love the book. I loved the child, Roz. I felt that Tell Me Everything went beyond the poetry I always wish to read; it went to the very essence of the child's voice, the child's experience. It is a pleasure to read a work that doesn't sound like an adult writing from a child's point of view. Instead, Carolyn Coman has a true and honest vision of this intelligent and compassionate child. The voice is startlingly honest. Carolyn Coman is a wonderful writer.”
—Patricia MacLachlan

About the Author, Coman

Carolyn Coman was born in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from Hampshire College, where she studied writing. She is the author of What Jamie Saw, a Newbery Honor book, and Many Stones, a Michael L. Printz Honor book. These were also National Book Award Finalists. More recently, Carolyn has published The Big House and its sequel, Sneaking Suspicions, both illustrated by Rob Shepperson. In 2010, Carolyn and Rob published The Memory Bank. Carolyn has been on the faculty of the Vermont College and the Hamline College MFA programs in Writing for Children and Young Adults and now the Whole Novel Workshops conducted under the auspices of the Highlights Foundation. She lives in a small town in New Hampshire.