WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead

Bibliography

Stead, Rebecca. 2009. WHEN YOU REACH ME. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780385737425

Plot Summary

Miranda is a 12-year-old who lives in New York City.  Her mother is preparing to appear on the television game show called the $20,000 Pyramid.  Everything is pretty routine in Miranda's life until one day, while walking home from school, Miranda's best friend Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason.  Things start becoming peculiar from that point on.  The spare key she and her mother hid in the fire hose disappears, and she starts receiving mysterious notes in random places.  It is up to Miranda to figure out the importance of these notes because someone's life is in danger.

Critical Analysis

WHEN YOU REACH ME is an example of a low fantasy book as it is set in New York City during the late seventies.  This story is told in the first person by the protagonist Miranda.  The book starts out with letting the reader know that Miranda's mother is going to be a contestant on the $20,000 Pyramid.  Throughout the story, Miranda and Richard (Miranda's mother's boyfriend) help Miranda's mother practice before she is set to appear on the show on April 27, 1979.  

Miranda is in sixth grade and her best friend is Sal.  He is lives in her building with his mother Louisa, and they've known each other almost their whole lives.  Everyday they walk to school together and pass by a strange homeless man who Miranda refers to as the "Laughing Man."  One day while walking home from school a boy named Marcus punches Sal and then just walks away.  After this happened, Sal stopped hanging out with Miranda, so she started hanging out with school friends Colin and Annemarie.  They even got a job at a sandwich shop where they worked during lunch.  Miranda's favorite book which she reads over and over is A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle.  One day Miranda confronts the boy who punched Sal (Marcus), and they start talking about time travel which is the theme of both this book and a A WRINKLE OF TIME.  Marcus confuses Miranda when explaining his theory on time travel, but she doesn't care because she doesn't believe it is actually possible.

One day Miranda finds a mysterious note sticking out of her library book.  The note was addressed to "M," so she wasn't sure if it was to her, but it was strange that the note asked about her spare apartment key a few days after their spare key had been stolen.  A second note appears, but this time it is addressed to Miranda and whoever wrote it knows she told her mother about it.  This note asks her not to share it with others.  They also remind Miranda to write them a letter and that her letter must tell a story.  On the first really cold day of December, Miranda's mom tells her she needs to wear her hooded jacket, and Miranda finds the third note in the pocket.  The note has clues, but Miranda doesn't know what they mean.  It won't be until later that all of the clues on this note will make sense.  One afternoon, Miranda was walking home from school and noticed Marcus trying to catch up to Sal, because he wanted to apologize for punching him.  Sal believes Marcus is going to hurt him, so he starts running.  He runs into the street and the laughing man kicks Sal out of the way of a moving truck.  The laughing man is hit by the truck.  As all of this is happening, Miranda finds a shoe containing the last note.  Miranda eventually figures out what the notes mean after thinking about past events and conversations.  She figures all of this out during the 55 seconds it took her mom "to guess six categories and win ten thousand dollars."

WHEN YOU REACH ME will appeal to readers interested in science fiction and time travel.  It is well written in very brief chapters with the majority of the chapters cleverly titled in a $20,000 Pyramid theme.  The author reveals each piece of the mystery in a way readers can discover what happens as Miranda discovers it.  The style of writing is conversational and includes a great deal of dialogue of the many characters in the book.  Besides the element of time travel, the story is very realistic and has a universal theme of the importance of friendship and the bond between mother and daughter.

Review Excerpt(s)

2010 Newbery Medal Winner

2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner

2010 Book Sense Book of the Year Award Winner

2009 Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books Award Winner

2009 School Library Journal Best Books of the Year Award Winner

Starred review in BOOKLIST: "If this book makes your head hurt, you're not alone. Sixth-grader Miranda admits that the events she relates make her head hurt, too. Time travel will do that to you. The story takes place in 1979, though time frames, as readers learn, are relative. Miranda and Sal have been best friends since way before that. They both live in a tired Manhattan apartment building and walk home together from school. One day everything changes. Sal is kicked and punched by a schoolmate and afterward barely acknowledges Miranda. Which leaves her to make new friends, even as she continues to reread her ratty copy of A Wrinkle in Time and tutor her mother for a chance to compete on The $20,000 Pyramid. She also ponders a puzzling, even alarming series of events that begins with a note: I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own . . . you must write me a letter. Miranda's first-person narrative is the letter she is sending to the future. Or is it the past? It's hard to know if the key events ultimately make sense (head hurting!), and it seems the whys, if not the hows, of a pivotal character's actions are not truly explained. Yet everything else is quite wonderful. The '70s New York setting is an honest reverberation of the era; the mental gymnastics required of readers are invigorating; and the characters, children and adults, are honest bits of humanity no matter in what place or time their souls rest. Just as Miranda rereads L'Engle, children will return to this."

Starred review in SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: "Miranda lives in 1978 New York City with her mother, and her life compass is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. When she receives a series of enigmatic notes that claim to want to save her life, she comes to believe that they are from someone who knows the future. Miranda spends considerable time observing a raving vagrant who her mother calls the laughing man and trying to find the connection between the notes and her everyday life. Discerning readers will realize the ties between Miranda's mystery and L'Engle's plot, but will enjoy hints of fantasy and descriptions of middle school dynamics. Stead's novel is as much about character as story. Miranda's voice rings true with its faltering attempts at maturity and observation. The story builds slowly, emerging naturally from a sturdy premise. As Miranda reminisces, the time sequencing is somewhat challenging, but in an intriguing way. The setting is consistently strong. The stores and even the streets–in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways. This unusual, thought-provoking mystery will appeal to several types of readers."

Connections

• Students could talk about their views on the possibility of time travel.
• Readers of this book may want to also read A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle.

Other books by Rebecca Stead:

• Stead, Rebecca. 2007. FIRST LIGHT. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780375840173
• Stead, Rebecca. 2012. LIAR & SPY. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. ISBN: 9780385737432