When You Reach Me
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- ISBN13: 9780739380727
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Winner of the 2010 John Newbery Medal
Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever.
By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the confront.
But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must question two favors. First, you must write me a letter.
The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her reflect she’s too late.
From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, July 2009: Before long after sixth-grader Miranda and her best friend Sal part ways, for some inexplicable reason her once familiar world turns upside down. Maybe it’s because she’s caught up in reading A Wrinkle in Time and trying to know time travel, or perhaps it’s because she’s been getting mysterious notes which accurately predict the future. Rebecca Stead’s poignant novel, When You Reach Me, captures the interior monologue and observations of kids who are starting to admit and negotiate the complexities of friendship and family tree, class and identity. Set in New York City in 1979, the tale takes its cue from beloved Manhattan tales for middle graders like E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, and Norma Klein’s Mom the Wolfman and Me. Like persons earlier novels, When You Reach Me will stir the imaginations of young readers curious about day-to-day life in a huge city. –Lauren Nemroff
Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Rebecca Stead
We had the opportunity to chat with Rebecca Stead over e-mail about her second novel, When You Reach Me. Here’s what Rebecca had to say about growing up in New York City, meeting Madeleine L’Engle, and how writing a novel is a lot like solving a puzzle.Amazon.com: When You Reach Me captures Manhattan in the late 70s perfectly. Why did you choose to set a book for young readers today in the not-too-distant (but very different) past?
Rebecca Stead: I grew up in New York in the seventies and eighties. When I was in elementary school, I became acquainted with a mysterious sort of character, who I wanted to use for this tale. When I started to write about him, I was suddenly remembering all kinds of details and moments and places from my own childhood and happily writing them into the book. And in this way the book’s setting sort of rose up around the plot.
There’s another reason I set the tale in the past, which is that I wanted to show a world of kids with a fantastic deal of autonomy, and I wasn’t sure that it would ring right in a modern New York setting. For better or for worse, life is different now.
Amazon.com: Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time plays an vital role in When You Reach Me. Why did you choose pay homage to this particular classic in your own book?
Rebecca Stead: I loved A Wrinkle in Time as a child. I didn’t know why I loved it, and I didn’t want to know why. I remember meeting Madeleine L’Engle once at a bookstore and just staring at her as if she were a magical person. What I like about L’Engle’s book now is how it deals with so much fragile inner-human stuff at the same time that it takes on life’s huge questions. There’s something fearless about this book.
It ongoing out as a tiny detail in Miranda’s tale, a sort of talisman, and one I thought I would eventually jettison, because you can’t just toss A Wrinkle in Time in there casually. But as my tale went deeper, I saw that I didn’t want to let the book go. I talked about it with my editor, Wendy Lamb, and to others close to the tale. And what we chose was that if we were going to bring L’Engle’s tale in, we needed to make the book’s relationship to Miranda’s tale stronger. So I went back to A Wrinkle in Time and read it again and again, trying to see it as different characters in my own tale might (sounds crazy, but it’s possible!). And persons readings led to new relations.
Amazon.com: I like the way you incorporate hints of science fiction into the ordinary events of Miranda’s life. What scientific possibilities (or realities) did you find most appealing growing up?
Rebecca Stead: I thought about time a lot when I was a kid. Not in a mystical way–it was just the passing of time, the thought of time stretching out forever, that interested me. I used to marvel, “What will my room look like on my thirtieth birthday? What will be the first words I say in the year 2000? When I’m forty, will I remember the ‘me’ I am now? Will I remember this moment?” I guess part of it was thinking about how we place ourselves behind in a way, which I reflect we do, throughout our lives.
I was also really interested in what is “knowable.” There’s a certain number of people alive on this planet right now, and it’s a simple number that anyone could write down or say aloud, and so in some sense that number exists as a truth, yet we can’t know it. That’s the kind of thing I thought about when I was Miranda’s age.
Amazon.com: Each of the book’s chapters is just a few pages in part, but each scene is fully drawn. Why did you choose to write the tale in this way? And why do most of the chapters start with the words “Things That…” or “Things On…”?
Rebecca Stead: A lot of my writing is bitty for some reason. It must be something about the way my brain works. I used to write fleeting tales, and this was the form they frequently took. When I ongoing writing my first novel, First Light, a lot of the raw material was also bitty, and I had to sort of renovate them into traditional chapters, which was what worked best for that tale. But When You Reach Me is a small like a puzzle, and I loved the challenge of smoothing these tiny pieces until the whole thing fit together just right.
The chapter names are (mostly) the names of categories inspired by a game show called The $20,000 Pyramid. As she tells her tale, Miranda is helping her mother get ready to be a contestant on the show. They practice every night, and the game sort of seeps into her all-purpose thinking. The book is about all sorts of assumptions and categories we carry in our heads, so it felt right on that level, too.
Amazon.com: At the very beginning of the novel, we learn that Miranda’s mom is going to be a contestant on the 1970’s TV game show The $20,000 Pyramid. Lacking giving away the ending, why is this opportunity so vital for them as a family tree?
Rebecca Stead: They need the money! Part of what’s happening for Miranda during this year is that she gets pushed outside of her formerly tiny world. Not far, but enough for her to start thinking about class, and the way additional people live. She starts to see the way she lives in a new way, and has to deal with that. It’s the beginning of that kind of awareness for her, and so the money they hope to win has a lot of meaning for her, but it’s a meaning that changes.
Amazon.com: Is there some significance to the way that Miranda, her mom, and her mom’s boyfriend Richard all prepare for the huge event?
Rebecca Stead: They have a pretty nice system, which starts with their national, Louisa, who scribbles down each day’s Pyramid clues at her nursing job because she’s the only one with access to a television at lunchtime. After her shift, she leaves the clues with Miranda, who copies them down on cards. Miranda and Richard take turns feeding clues to Miranda’s mom while the additional one keeps time. They run as one kind of New York City family tree, which is probably the vital thing.
Amazon.com: Why do Miranda and her friends Annemarie and Colin like effective in Jimmy’s sandwich shop during lunch hour? Especially since he doesn’t pay them. Why don’t they hang out at school as a replacement for?
Rebecca Stead: It doesn’t feel like work to them. They are twelve, and all they want to do is see what it’s like to be out in the world together. It’s the most exciting thing ever, except when it’s dull. Hanging out at school means sitting in the lunchroom, which is not fun. They couldn’t even sit together there, because Colin would permanently be sitting with the boys.
Amazon.com: Do you reflect latch-key kids like Miranda are any different today than they were back in the 70s? How about city kids versus suburban kids?
Rebecca Stead: I’m now raising two kids of my own in New York City, and I reflect a lot about the differences between today’s “preteen experience” and the one I had. Kids are generally less independent now, I reflect. My friends and I had a lot more freedom than I let my own kids have. The community just doesn’t support it anymore. Now we have 24-hour-a-day news and twenty-two different police dramas that make constant dread seem kind of reasonable. And the internet has changed everything, obviously. Kids socialize in cyberspace now. I’ve heard that the suburban experience has also changed a lot. My spouse grew up in the suburbs and his parents hardly ever knew where he was at age twelve. Persons days are gone, I reflect.
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Although I have bought many things from Amazon with excellent success, I never recieved this item even after contacting Amazon and the seller. It was stated as shipped around 12/16 and here it is 2/8/2010 and no book. I will be way more cautious in the future. It may just be the seller and not Amazon but it affects the whole. It was also a gift for my nephew for Christmas…so whadda you say?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I thought this was all right.
It is fleeting and can be read in a couple hours easily.
I just didn’t find it all that appealing.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Despite some jarring anachronisms — e.g., the use of “electric blue” fingernail polish in a U.S. office work place in the 1970s — this appealing fantasy offers an entertaining journey through time and some charming observations from the perspective of a twelve-year-ancient girl ostensibly living in 1970s America. The writing is not strong enough to use as a model in the educational setting, but it is certainly a fun and captivating read.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This was our pick, among English teachers and our prescient school librarian, for the year’s Newbery; we were tickled to listen to the webcast and find out it won! This is a terrific tale, and it pays homage to A Wrinkle in Time. Treat yourself; read this book. Our librarian is so wise she selected it as a book for our Battle of the Books this year.
Our second pick, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, was an honor book; it is well worth your time.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Read all Newberry award books every year and this year’s winner does not measure up.
Sounds like the leader belived a book involving a 1970s game show would be a fantastic thought and kept on writing even after she realized she was incorrect.
There’s nothing to this book. A 12 year-ancient girl, some unexceptional friends, two boys she doesn’t know, a pizza place, a dentist in a school, a mentally disabled guy who has arrived from the Fantastic Elsewhere, plus a single mom and her boyfriend and a featured character named after a court case. Maybe … maybe … some latent promise, but nothing ever happens, no excitement, no illumination, no novelty. There’s just no tale here, just a brickwork of vingettes and a few hours of diversion, like sipping a guart of warm water then wondering if you can find something next with real flavor.
This book simply does not compare with, for example, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.
My apologies to all persons who favorably reviewed When You Reach Me but it never reached me.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5