When You Reach Me: (Newbery Medal Winner)

Rebecca Stead

Jul 2009 · Sold by Wendy Lamb Books

About this ebook

"Like A Wrinkle in Time (Miranda's favorite book), When You Reach Me far surpasses the usual whodunit or sci-fi adventure to become an incandescent exploration of 'life, death, and the beauty of it all.'" —The Washington Post
 
This Newbery Medal winner that has been called "smart and mesmerizing," (The New York Times) and "superb" (The Wall Street Journal) will appeal to readers of all types, especially those who are looking for a thought-provoking mystery with a mind-blowing twist.
 
Shortly after a fall-out with her best friend, sixth grader Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes, and she doesn’t know what to do. The notes tell her that she must write a letter—a true story, and that she can’t share her mission with anyone.
 
It would be easy to ignore the strange messages, except that whoever is leaving them has an uncanny ability to predict the future. If that is the case, then Miranda has a big problem—because the notes tell her that someone is going to die, and she might be too late to stop it.
 
Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction
A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book
Five Starred Reviews
A Junior Library Guild Selection
 
"Absorbing." —People

"Readers ... are likely to find themselves chewing over the details of this superb and intricate tale long afterward." —The Wall Street Journal
 
"Lovely and almost impossibly clever." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
"It's easy to imagine readers studying Miranda's story as many times as she's read L'Engle's, and spending hours pondering the provocative questions it raises." —Publishers Weekly, Starred review

Ratings and reviews

Rebecca Stead’s novel, When You Reach Me, is closely tied with another novel, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. The main character in When You Reach Me, Miranda, holds A Wrinkle in Time to be her special book she reads every day, and both story plot resolutions of both stories revolve around the logic of time travel. Miranda in When You Reach Me lives in an apartment with her Mom next to her best friend Sal. While Miranda is trying to unravel the mysteries of several notes that she finds and helping her Mom prepare for her show, Miranda also suffers a changing relationship with her friend Sal. He no longer minds her, and actually ignores her, and is often sick. One day, Marcus, a child knowledgeable in time travel, chases Sal almost to death, when a laughing man saved Sal and killed himself. This laughing man is the future self of Marcus, and Marcus has to watch him future self get hit by a truck and die. While watching her mother’s show, Miranda is suddenly able to lift the “veil” that both protects her and makes her ignorant to many aspects of the world, and she understands that the laughing man wrote the notes asking her to write her letter to Marcus, when he already read it. I also had a click, then. I understood that Marcus is to receive Miranda’s letter about what happened, read it, then grow up and follow the laughing man’s path in order to save Sal. The very “first” Marcus must have seen Sal die, so Marcus grew up, then time traveled back to change what happened. I find this book to be very meaningful, for I was suddenly able to understand the real concepts of time travel. When one time travels, he suddenly creates an infinite number of himself, for when he grows up he’ll time travel back to create another self, and that self will grow up and repeat what the original one did. And yet, I don’t think that is how Rebecca Stead thinks of time traveling. She thinks of it jumping from a photo to another photo, as Marcus and Julia explain.

Gr 5-8 –Sixth-grader 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.–Caitlin Augusta, The Darien Library, CT This is a great light mystery (with a bit of sci-fi thrown in) that I think will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including those who would never think of picking up a sci-fi book or a mystery ...

For me, it was not the mystery of the story that was engaging, but the heartfelt struggle of twelve year old Miranda who struggles with her own name, loved ones, betrayal and understanding humanity. The humor and life lessons within 'When You Reach Me' are very age appropriate, and parents will not have to censor portions if reading aloud.

About the author

REBECCA STEAD is the author of When You Reach Me, which was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Newbery Medal and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction, and Liar & Spy, which was also a New York Times bestseller, won the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction, and was on multiple state master lists and best of the year lists. Her most recent book, Goodbye Stranger, was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book for Fiction and a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of First Light, which was nominated for many state awards. She lives in New York City with her family. Visit her online at rebeccasteadbooks.com.