Skip to main content

When You Reach Me

By

When You Reach Me
by Rebecca Stead
Random House, 2009. 197 pgs. Juvenile fiction.
Considerable Newbery talk is swirling around When You Reach Me, and rightly so as it combines the best aspects of two previous winners--Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, and Lynne Rae Perkins' Criss Cross--to create a splendid story in its own right. The narrative takes the form of a letter Miranda, the protagonist, writes to an unknown correspondent who seems to be sending her messages from the future, one of which asks her to write the letter. If that seems circular it is meant to be as the story spins on the question of time travel, but it is also firmly grounded in the delights and despairs of pre-teen life in 70s New York. As Miranda's mother frantically trains to make big bucks on the $20,000 Pyramid, Miranda is trying to figure out why her best friend Sal stopped talking to her after he got punched out for no apparent reason by Marcus, a kid neither of them knew, and how to navigate the perilous waters of being friends with Annemarie but not with Julie. When You Reach Me has everything: mystery, suspense, expansive scientific thinking, the perils and joys of familial and friendly relationships, and the question of how Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which got Meg and Charles Wallace back into the garden five minutes before they left without their being able to see themselves leaving. A real crackerjack of a book. I loved it.
Labels:

Comments

curlyq said…
This was an incredible book--it reels you in and doesn't let you go. However, it's an extremely readable book and I believe even less enthusiastic readers can enjoy it...if they can get past the rather dull and unappealing cover. Excellent, excellent story.
September 19, 2009 at 3:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Kareem Between

By
  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Sole Survivor

By
  Sole Survivor  Written By Norman Ollestad and Brendan Kiely  New York: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2025. 255 pages.  This is a juvenile biography/memoire about the plane crash that Norman Ollestad survived when he was a sixth grader. The book starts off with Norman wining a skiing competition and heading home to play in a hockey game only to head onto an airplane with his dad, his dad’s girlfriend (Sandra), and the pilot so he could go and claim his trophy for the skiing competition. Only, the plane crashed and the pilot and Norman’s dad were killed. Then when Sandra falls and dies as well, Norman is left as the sole survivor from the plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains during a snowstorm.  Fans of Hatchet or other adventure novels will love reading how Norman survived this ordeal. And they will be even more impressed with the fact that this is a true story and the person who survived and is still alive today. This book goes over all of...
Post a Comment
Read more

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more