When You Reach Me
Encyclopedia
When You Reach Me is a Newbery Medal
-winning science fiction
and mystery
novel by Rebecca Stead
, published in 2009. It takes place in the Upper West Side
in New York City
during 1979 and follows the protagonist, Miranda. She receives a strange note asking her to record future events and write down the location of her spare key. As the novel progresses, Miranda receives three more notes with requests. The novel contains three storylines — the appearance of Miranda's mom on The $20,000 Pyramid
, Miranda's best friend Sal suddenly not talking with Miranda and the appearance of a laughing man. Central themes in the novel include independence, redemption and friendship. Stead also wanted to demonstrate the possibilities that she saw in time travel. The author hoped to show her children what New York was like in her childhood, and demonstrate how in an earlier time children were more independent.
When You Reach Me was inspired by a newspaper article about a man suffering from amnesia, and by parts of her childhood and her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time
. After completing much of the novel, Stead gave the draft to her editor, Wendy Lamb, who liked it. They expanded on the initial concepts and published When You Reach Me on July 14, 2009, under Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House
. The book was well-received by critics, who praised its realistic setting and the author's deft handling of small details. The novel has reached the best-seller lists of The New York Times
, Los Angeles Times
and USA Today
. In addition to receiving the 2010 Newbery Medal, When You Reach Me won several Best Book of the Year awards.
gave her an idea for a novel about traveling in time to save someone's life. The article was about a man who woke up in Denver suffering from amnesia
, having forgotten who he was or why he was there. Many people worked with the man to help him regain his memory. Under hypnosis
, he spoke about his apparent wife, Penny, and two daughters who died in a car crash. However, when he and Penny reunited, the man found out she was only his fiancée — and they had no children. Upon reading this, Stead wondered if somehow the man had returned to the past to prevent an accident but lost his memory along the way. In addition, the article reminded Stead of a strange old man who lived near her house as a child called the laughing man.
While the news story initially inspired Stead, she also tied in parts of her childhood into the novel. Besides the laughing man, she included her elementary school, her apartment and a sandwich store where she used to work. Stead also added memories of herself acting mean without reason. Slowly the novel became "more and more about these ordinary mysteries of life and less about the fantastic time-travel-y one". After developing the basic idea, Stead began researching the science behind time travel to make sure her ideas would be logical. She asked her father for help with the science and complicated technical aspects, since he enjoyed mathematical puzzles. As they talked about time travel, Stead "just kept falling into the same hole with the logic, and he really helped me straighten it out".
When Stead was only halfway done, she hit a wall: she wondered if she had focused the novel too much on her own personal life and problems. By her 40th birthday in January 2008, she had stopped writing. One week after her birthday celebration, Stead went to a writers' conference where the presenter advised attendees to stop thinking and just write. This speech worked as an antidote to Stead's writer's block
; she started working on When You Reach Me again. After she had written two-thirds of the novel, Stead sent the draft to her editor Wendy Lamb at Random House
. Perusing the script, Lamb found herself absorbed and wanted to help develop the book. Unlike Stead's debut novel First Light, which Lamb heavily edited, Lamb modified nothing on the first draft of When You Reach Me. Throughout the process, Stead helped Lamb understand the complicated concepts in the book and had drafts read by others to make sure "revision hadn't created any holes or contradictions in the plot".
's A Wrinkle in Time
, Stead's favorite book as a child; she read and reread it. She recalls that L'Engle was the only author she met in her childhood. Stead described the novel as a talisman for Miranda; she included it in the first draft and planned to remove it, "because you can't just toss A Wrinkle in Time in there casually". Her editor suggested leaving it in if it could be better tied into the story. Stead was aware that she did not want A Wrinkle in Time to have too big an influence on When You Reach Me. Keeping this in mind, she reread A Wrinkle in Time through the perspective of different characters, which enabled her to develop new connections and ideas in her own work.
, New York City, where Stead grew up. It is snowing there. Many parts of the novel explore "the same streets where Stead grew up, and riffs on some of her experiences". Stead was inspired to use this setting because she moved into an apartment near her childhood home early in the development of the story. There she had experienced her first independence while exploring the streets, only to find a scary man near her house. Wondering why he was there, Stead later used this incident as "the anchor as she wrote When You Reach Me".
When You Reach Me follows a sixth-grade protagonist, Miranda. Her seemingly-normal life begins to change when her best friend Sal is punched by a classmate who is in a gang. Later, Miranda strikes up an acquaintance with Marcus, the boy who punched Sal. She learns that he is not actually part of the gang and is rather nice. They discuss time travel, which Miranda has difficulty grasping due to her belief that "the end can't happen before the middle".
A homeless man lives on the corner of Miranda's street. She calls him the "laughing man" for his tendency to laugh without cause. Miranda notices that he always utters the words "book bag pocket shoe". The phrase refers to the order and place he will send Miranda notes—her library book, a bread bag, her coat pocket and a shoe. The first three notes instruct Miranda to write a letter describing the future events. The notes, whose writer claims to be coming to Miranda's time to save a life, offer three signs of the truth of the messages. As the plot develops, the proofs come true.
The bulk of the novel prior to the climax follows Miranda and her friends Colin and Annamarie, who work in a sandwich shop during their lunch period. One day, Annamarie's friend Julia enters the store, but is expelled by the owner Jimmy, who thinks she is dirty because she is not white. Miranda has hated Julia since elementary school for her cockiness, but gradually realizes Julia is not so bad. When Julia questions Miranda after school about why she hates her, Miranda realizes that Julia was never really that annoying. The two call a truce and become friends.
In a later scene, Marcus encounters Sal. Marcus wants to apologize for his misbehavior, and chases Sal when he flees. Sal runs onto a street right ahead of an oncoming truck. Before the truck can hit Sal, the laughing man kicks Sal out of the way, sacrificing his own life for Sal's. Miranda finds the fourth note in the laughing man's shoe and learns that he came from the future to save Sal's life. The note asks Miranda to prepare a chronicle of recent events and deliver it by hand. It does not say to whom.
Miranda's mom is expected to appear on the $20,000 Pyramid. In hopes of winning the money and having a better life, Miranda and her mom's boyfriend Richard prep her for the show. While her mother is on-stage, Miranda reminisces about a conversation with Marcus about how no one would recognize a time-traveler from a different age. She suddenly realizes that the laughing man is an older incarnation of Marcus, who has come from the future to save Sal's life. He needed to deliver the chronicle to the young Marcus through Miranda, who is conveniently his friend. The novel ends as Miranda reflects on the events in a short epilogue.
and mystery
genres, but includes features of some other genres. Monica Edinger of The New York Times
found When You Reach Me to be "a hybrid of genres, it is a complex mystery, a work of historical fiction, a school story and one of friendship, with a leitmotif of time travel running through it." Augusta Scattergood of the Christian Science Monitor wondered, "Is When You Reach Me science fiction? Time travel? A highly imaginative girl's completely conceived experience? Maybe it's historical fiction. After all, it is set in 1979." According to Mary Quattlebaum of The Washington Post
, the novel is of the science fiction and time travel genres. Quattlebaum found that, unlike the usual time travel stories, When You Reach Me does not involve "cheesy time travel machines and rock-'em-sock-'em action [but instead] far surpasses the usual whodunit or sci-fi adventure to become an incandescent exploration of 'life, death, and the beauty of it all.' " Both Kirkus Reviews
and Publishers Weekly
found that despite the book's science-fiction devices, the setting was still "firmly rooted in reality."
Some reviewers have placed parts the novel in the mystery genre. Edinger found that despite the broad genres, the novel is mainly "a thrilling puzzle". She relates the pieces slowly; clues are found in the story itself, on the map, in words and chapter titles. At the end of the book everything is tied together and makes sense. Ann Crewdson of School Library Journal
found that each note Miranda receives foreshadows the next event. Each note is "skillfully" integrated into the novel, along with subsequent clues, until the climax
is reached and all the clues come together. Stead's editor Lamb agreed with the mystery genre, in that "there's plenty to wonder about after you finish the book. Just as we wonder why our feelings change so suddenly, or why someone like the laughing man appears on the corner one day." Gurdon of The Wall Street Journal
concurred with Lamb, adding that although the novel is clearly a mystery, the mystery itself is not revealed until the end, where everything ties together.
This theme of friendship is explored when Sal abandons his friendship with Miranda after he is hit by Marcus. Elli Housden of The Courier-Mail
found that Miranda is forced to deal with the fact that Sal seemingly abandons their friendship and ignores her for no apparent reason. Scattergood considered the novel an "ordinary friendship story" with Sal ignoring Miranda to find other friends. Julie Long from Reading Time noted how the incident forces Miranda to find new friends and become more active in school, where she starts learning the dynamics of that environment.
Mead noted that "the book builds toward second chances for Miranda's mother—both vocationally and relationally." As the novel progresses, Miranda gives second chances to Julia, a girl whom Miranda initially hates, and Alice, a girl who always needs to use the bathroom but never does. Miranda previously considered Julia "a competitor for Annemarie's affection, and Alice as the weird kid who waited too long to go to the bathroom". By the end of the book, she finds Julia to be Annemarie's friend and discovers that Alice is an insecure girl.
Stead finds that kids today are much less independent since her childhood. She wrote, "[F]rom age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses, going to the store. I really wanted to write about that: the independence that's a little bit scary but also a really positive thing in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure that most kids have that today". Throughout the novel, Miranda and her friends often walk around town without any adults. They are even found working in a sandwich store at lunch and walking home from school while trying to avoid the laughing man. While writing the novel, Stead hoped to show her sons the time period in which she lived, "send[ing] them on a little time-travel journey of their own". Laura Miller of The New Yorker
found that this lack of independence in today's youth is mainly due to the fact that kids now grow up with adults constantly watching them. Miller noted how, despite the lower crime rate in current times, the "characters, middle-class middle school students, routinely walk around the Upper West Side by themselves, a rare freedom in today's city."
found that time travel forms a central theme as Miranda constantly wonders how time travel could be possible. In When You Reach Me, Marcus helps Miranda realize that the three old ladies from A Wrinkle in Time lied to Meg by promising they would return five minutes before they left. Marcus explains:
Roger Sutton from Horn Book Magazine
felt that the moment Marcus explains this flaw to Miranda is the first exchange that shows the novel to be complicated and mysterious. Quattlebaum noted, "The story's structure – an expert interweaving of past, present and future – brilliantly contradicts Miranda's commonsensical belief that the end can't happen before the middle." Stead explained her view of time travel in her novel, where going back in time is fulfilling the future, rather than changing it. She hoped to make the time travel element logical to show that "Miranda wasn't struggling to understand the seeming randomness and infinity of the universe, but learning that her world has value and that people do care about her".
stated that her tone "emphasized the novel's interpersonal aspects". The reviewer found it beneficial that the chapter titles were added to the audio, since they seemed to add more detail about the book, but can be easily skipped over when reading. M.V.P criticized the voicing of Miranda's mom. AudioFile
praised Halloway for "a strong reading...[that] makes listeners curious about this story's nonlinear structure" and for managing the different elements of the story.
s bestseller list during the week of January 28, 2010. On April 22, 2010, after staying at number 15 for 2 weeks, When You Reach Me left the Los Angeles Times
bestseller list.
Reviewers lauded the realistic setting and characters. Ilene Cooper of Booklist
acknowledged that although she was unsure if the ending was logical, "everything else is quite wonderful". She praised the realistic portrayal of New York and mentioned that "the characters, children and adults... are honest bits of humanity". Julianna M. Helt of The Post Gazette felt that along with the "wonderful sense of middle school dynamics", Stead's depiction of New York City in the 1970s was superb. Quattlebaum considered no character to be minor; each plays an important part in the story. Caitlin Augusta of School Library Journal found the setting to be "consistently strong. The stores—and even the streets—in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways".
Reviewers praised how Stead made every small detail matter. Augusta Scattergood of the Christian Science Monitor enjoyed the detailed work: "The beauty of Stead's writing is found in the way she weaves subplots and settings together seamlessly. Richard's stolen shoe drops into place. A reference to forbidden grapes is tied up sweetly. Stolen $2 bills? Another part of the enigma explained by the end." Edginer agreed, commenting that despite the small size of the novel compared to other popular books, When You Reach Me is a "taut novel, every word, every sentence, has meaning and substance." Publishers Weekly added that even the smallest of details—Miranda's name, her strange habits and why she carries A Wrinkle of Time with her—have a reason for their inclusion by the end of the novel.
had tweeted
the result 17 minutes prior the official announcement. The tweet was quickly taken down when the mistake was noticed. The judges chose the novel for making the small details important to the plot. Chairwoman of the Newbery committee Katie O'Dell felt that "Every scene, every nuance, every word is vital both to character development and the progression of the mystery that really is going to engage readers and satisfy them". The committee was "very excited about this book because it is exceptionally conceived, finely crafted and highly original".
Newbery Medal
The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ...
-winning science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
novel by Rebecca Stead
Rebecca Stead
Rebecca Stead is an American author who writes books for children and young adults. She won the 2010 Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature for her second novel, When You Reach Me.-Childhood and education:Born and raised in New York City, Stead enjoyed her...
, published in 2009. It takes place in the Upper West Side
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
during 1979 and follows the protagonist, Miranda. She receives a strange note asking her to record future events and write down the location of her spare key. As the novel progresses, Miranda receives three more notes with requests. The novel contains three storylines — the appearance of Miranda's mom on The $20,000 Pyramid
Pyramid (game show)
Pyramid is an American television game show which has aired several versions. The original series, The $10,000 Pyramid, debuted March 26, 1973 and spawned seven subsequent Pyramid series...
, Miranda's best friend Sal suddenly not talking with Miranda and the appearance of a laughing man. Central themes in the novel include independence, redemption and friendship. Stead also wanted to demonstrate the possibilities that she saw in time travel. The author hoped to show her children what New York was like in her childhood, and demonstrate how in an earlier time children were more independent.
When You Reach Me was inspired by a newspaper article about a man suffering from amnesia, and by parts of her childhood and her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1962. The story revolves around a young girl whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract. The book won a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and...
. After completing much of the novel, Stead gave the draft to her editor, Wendy Lamb, who liked it. They expanded on the initial concepts and published When You Reach Me on July 14, 2009, under Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
. The book was well-received by critics, who praised its realistic setting and the author's deft handling of small details. The novel has reached the best-seller lists of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
and USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
. In addition to receiving the 2010 Newbery Medal, When You Reach Me won several Best Book of the Year awards.
Concept and development
Stead began writing When You Reach Me in 2007 after reading an article in The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
gave her an idea for a novel about traveling in time to save someone's life. The article was about a man who woke up in Denver suffering from amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
, having forgotten who he was or why he was there. Many people worked with the man to help him regain his memory. Under hypnosis
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
, he spoke about his apparent wife, Penny, and two daughters who died in a car crash. However, when he and Penny reunited, the man found out she was only his fiancée — and they had no children. Upon reading this, Stead wondered if somehow the man had returned to the past to prevent an accident but lost his memory along the way. In addition, the article reminded Stead of a strange old man who lived near her house as a child called the laughing man.
| "All along, the goal was to be certain that the logic would stand up to the merciless scrutiny of a smart kid. Someone might finish the book and then go right back and start again, reading so closely that she or he would spot any inconsistency. We didn't want to let the reader down." |
| — Editor Wendy Lamb |
While the news story initially inspired Stead, she also tied in parts of her childhood into the novel. Besides the laughing man, she included her elementary school, her apartment and a sandwich store where she used to work. Stead also added memories of herself acting mean without reason. Slowly the novel became "more and more about these ordinary mysteries of life and less about the fantastic time-travel-y one". After developing the basic idea, Stead began researching the science behind time travel to make sure her ideas would be logical. She asked her father for help with the science and complicated technical aspects, since he enjoyed mathematical puzzles. As they talked about time travel, Stead "just kept falling into the same hole with the logic, and he really helped me straighten it out".
When Stead was only halfway done, she hit a wall: she wondered if she had focused the novel too much on her own personal life and problems. By her 40th birthday in January 2008, she had stopped writing. One week after her birthday celebration, Stead went to a writers' conference where the presenter advised attendees to stop thinking and just write. This speech worked as an antidote to Stead's writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
; she started working on When You Reach Me again. After she had written two-thirds of the novel, Stead sent the draft to her editor Wendy Lamb at Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
. Perusing the script, Lamb found herself absorbed and wanted to help develop the book. Unlike Stead's debut novel First Light, which Lamb heavily edited, Lamb modified nothing on the first draft of When You Reach Me. Throughout the process, Stead helped Lamb understand the complicated concepts in the book and had drafts read by others to make sure "revision hadn't created any holes or contradictions in the plot".
A Wrinkle in Time
Throughout the story, the main character Miranda is often reading Madeleine L'EngleMadeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
's A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time
A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1962. The story revolves around a young girl whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract. The book won a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and...
, Stead's favorite book as a child; she read and reread it. She recalls that L'Engle was the only author she met in her childhood. Stead described the novel as a talisman for Miranda; she included it in the first draft and planned to remove it, "because you can't just toss A Wrinkle in Time in there casually". Her editor suggested leaving it in if it could be better tied into the story. Stead was aware that she did not want A Wrinkle in Time to have too big an influence on When You Reach Me. Keeping this in mind, she reread A Wrinkle in Time through the perspective of different characters, which enabled her to develop new connections and ideas in her own work.
Setting
When You Reach Me takes place during the 1978–79 school year of Miranda, the main character. Stead placed Miranda's home in the Upper West SideUpper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
, New York City, where Stead grew up. It is snowing there. Many parts of the novel explore "the same streets where Stead grew up, and riffs on some of her experiences". Stead was inspired to use this setting because she moved into an apartment near her childhood home early in the development of the story. There she had experienced her first independence while exploring the streets, only to find a scary man near her house. Wondering why he was there, Stead later used this incident as "the anchor as she wrote When You Reach Me".
Plot summary
| M, This is hard. Harder than I expected, even with your help. But I have been practicing, and my preparations go well. I am coming to save your friend's life and my own. I ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter. Second, please remember to mention the location of your house key. The trip is a difficult one. I will not be myself when I reach you. |
| — The first letter Miranda receives |
When You Reach Me follows a sixth-grade protagonist, Miranda. Her seemingly-normal life begins to change when her best friend Sal is punched by a classmate who is in a gang. Later, Miranda strikes up an acquaintance with Marcus, the boy who punched Sal. She learns that he is not actually part of the gang and is rather nice. They discuss time travel, which Miranda has difficulty grasping due to her belief that "the end can't happen before the middle".
A homeless man lives on the corner of Miranda's street. She calls him the "laughing man" for his tendency to laugh without cause. Miranda notices that he always utters the words "book bag pocket shoe". The phrase refers to the order and place he will send Miranda notes—her library book, a bread bag, her coat pocket and a shoe. The first three notes instruct Miranda to write a letter describing the future events. The notes, whose writer claims to be coming to Miranda's time to save a life, offer three signs of the truth of the messages. As the plot develops, the proofs come true.
The bulk of the novel prior to the climax follows Miranda and her friends Colin and Annamarie, who work in a sandwich shop during their lunch period. One day, Annamarie's friend Julia enters the store, but is expelled by the owner Jimmy, who thinks she is dirty because she is not white. Miranda has hated Julia since elementary school for her cockiness, but gradually realizes Julia is not so bad. When Julia questions Miranda after school about why she hates her, Miranda realizes that Julia was never really that annoying. The two call a truce and become friends.
In a later scene, Marcus encounters Sal. Marcus wants to apologize for his misbehavior, and chases Sal when he flees. Sal runs onto a street right ahead of an oncoming truck. Before the truck can hit Sal, the laughing man kicks Sal out of the way, sacrificing his own life for Sal's. Miranda finds the fourth note in the laughing man's shoe and learns that he came from the future to save Sal's life. The note asks Miranda to prepare a chronicle of recent events and deliver it by hand. It does not say to whom.
Miranda's mom is expected to appear on the $20,000 Pyramid. In hopes of winning the money and having a better life, Miranda and her mom's boyfriend Richard prep her for the show. While her mother is on-stage, Miranda reminisces about a conversation with Marcus about how no one would recognize a time-traveler from a different age. She suddenly realizes that the laughing man is an older incarnation of Marcus, who has come from the future to save Sal's life. He needed to deliver the chronicle to the young Marcus through Miranda, who is conveniently his friend. The novel ends as Miranda reflects on the events in a short epilogue.
Genres
When You Reach Me is classified in the science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
genres, but includes features of some other genres. Monica Edinger of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
found When You Reach Me to be "a hybrid of genres, it is a complex mystery, a work of historical fiction, a school story and one of friendship, with a leitmotif of time travel running through it." Augusta Scattergood of the Christian Science Monitor wondered, "Is When You Reach Me science fiction? Time travel? A highly imaginative girl's completely conceived experience? Maybe it's historical fiction. After all, it is set in 1979." According to Mary Quattlebaum of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, the novel is of the science fiction and time travel genres. Quattlebaum found that, unlike the usual time travel stories, When You Reach Me does not involve "cheesy time travel machines and rock-'em-sock-'em action [but instead] far surpasses the usual whodunit or sci-fi adventure to become an incandescent exploration of 'life, death, and the beauty of it all.' " Both Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
and Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
found that despite the book's science-fiction devices, the setting was still "firmly rooted in reality."
Some reviewers have placed parts the novel in the mystery genre. Edinger found that despite the broad genres, the novel is mainly "a thrilling puzzle". She relates the pieces slowly; clues are found in the story itself, on the map, in words and chapter titles. At the end of the book everything is tied together and makes sense. Ann Crewdson of School Library Journal
School Library Journal
The School Library Journal is a monthly magazine with articles and reviews for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with a focus on technology and multimedia. Reviews are included for preschool to 4th grade,...
found that each note Miranda receives foreshadows the next event. Each note is "skillfully" integrated into the novel, along with subsequent clues, until the climax
Climax (narrative)
The Climax is the point in the story where the main character's point of view changes, or the most exciting/action filled part of the story. It also known has the main turning point in the story...
is reached and all the clues come together. Stead's editor Lamb agreed with the mystery genre, in that "there's plenty to wonder about after you finish the book. Just as we wonder why our feelings change so suddenly, or why someone like the laughing man appears on the corner one day." Gurdon of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
concurred with Lamb, adding that although the novel is clearly a mystery, the mystery itself is not revealed until the end, where everything ties together.
Themes
Aaron Mead found that "the novel addresses the question of how to hold on to old friendships without stifling them, and it insightfully brings out the stabilizing effect that new friendships can have in the effort to preserve or reclaim old ones". He noted that the novel deeply helps teens in middle school. Crewdson opined that the book deals with the "intricacies of friendship".This theme of friendship is explored when Sal abandons his friendship with Miranda after he is hit by Marcus. Elli Housden of The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail
The Courier-Mail is a daily newspaper published in Brisbane, Australia. Owned by News Limited, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner northern suburbs, and it is printed at Murarrie, in Brisbane's...
found that Miranda is forced to deal with the fact that Sal seemingly abandons their friendship and ignores her for no apparent reason. Scattergood considered the novel an "ordinary friendship story" with Sal ignoring Miranda to find other friends. Julie Long from Reading Time noted how the incident forces Miranda to find new friends and become more active in school, where she starts learning the dynamics of that environment.
Mead noted that "the book builds toward second chances for Miranda's mother—both vocationally and relationally." As the novel progresses, Miranda gives second chances to Julia, a girl whom Miranda initially hates, and Alice, a girl who always needs to use the bathroom but never does. Miranda previously considered Julia "a competitor for Annemarie's affection, and Alice as the weird kid who waited too long to go to the bathroom". By the end of the book, she finds Julia to be Annemarie's friend and discovers that Alice is an insecure girl.
Stead finds that kids today are much less independent since her childhood. She wrote, "[F]rom age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses, going to the store. I really wanted to write about that: the independence that's a little bit scary but also a really positive thing in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure that most kids have that today". Throughout the novel, Miranda and her friends often walk around town without any adults. They are even found working in a sandwich store at lunch and walking home from school while trying to avoid the laughing man. While writing the novel, Stead hoped to show her sons the time period in which she lived, "send[ing] them on a little time-travel journey of their own". Laura Miller of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
found that this lack of independence in today's youth is mainly due to the fact that kids now grow up with adults constantly watching them. Miller noted how, despite the lower crime rate in current times, the "characters, middle-class middle school students, routinely walk around the Upper West Side by themselves, a rare freedom in today's city."
Time travel
Julianna Helt from the Pittsburgh Post-GazettePittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...
found that time travel forms a central theme as Miranda constantly wonders how time travel could be possible. In When You Reach Me, Marcus helps Miranda realize that the three old ladies from A Wrinkle in Time lied to Meg by promising they would return five minutes before they left. Marcus explains:
"So the garden is where they appear when they get home at the end of the book. Remember? They land in the broccoli. So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they did".
Roger Sutton from Horn Book Magazine
Horn Book Magazine
The Horn Book Magazine, founded in Boston in 1924, is a bimonthly periodical about literature for children and young adults. It began life as a "suggestive purchase list" prepared by Bertha Mahony Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, proprietresses of the country's first bookstore for children, The...
felt that the moment Marcus explains this flaw to Miranda is the first exchange that shows the novel to be complicated and mysterious. Quattlebaum noted, "The story's structure – an expert interweaving of past, present and future – brilliantly contradicts Miranda's commonsensical belief that the end can't happen before the middle." Stead explained her view of time travel in her novel, where going back in time is fulfilling the future, rather than changing it. She hoped to make the time travel element logical to show that "Miranda wasn't struggling to understand the seeming randomness and infinity of the universe, but learning that her world has value and that people do care about her".
Audiobook adaption
The audiobook adaption of When You Reach Me was released by Listening Library and contains four disks. In praise of Cynthia Holloway's performance of Miranda, M.V.P from Horn Book MagazineHorn Book Magazine
The Horn Book Magazine, founded in Boston in 1924, is a bimonthly periodical about literature for children and young adults. It began life as a "suggestive purchase list" prepared by Bertha Mahony Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, proprietresses of the country's first bookstore for children, The...
stated that her tone "emphasized the novel's interpersonal aspects". The reviewer found it beneficial that the chapter titles were added to the audio, since they seemed to add more detail about the book, but can be easily skipped over when reading. M.V.P criticized the voicing of Miranda's mom. AudioFile
AudioFile (magazine)
-Launch:The publication was launched in 1992 as a twelve-page black & white newsletter with about 50 critical reviews of audiobooks, focused on new releases. In 1997, it switched to a 36-page colour magazine format with about 60 reviews per issue and interviews with authors, readers, and...
praised Halloway for "a strong reading...[that] makes listeners curious about this story's nonlinear structure" and for managing the different elements of the story.
Critical reception
When You Reach Me was published on July 14, 2009, in hardcover format by Wendy Lamb Books. Reception of When You Reach Me was positive. Reviewers praised the details and characters. The novel has reached many bestseller lists; the work was on The New York Times Best Seller list for 16 weeks ending May 9, 2010. It was number 127 on USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
s bestseller list during the week of January 28, 2010. On April 22, 2010, after staying at number 15 for 2 weeks, When You Reach Me left the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
bestseller list.
Reviewers lauded the realistic setting and characters. Ilene Cooper of Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
acknowledged that although she was unsure if the ending was logical, "everything else is quite wonderful". She praised the realistic portrayal of New York and mentioned that "the characters, children and adults... are honest bits of humanity". Julianna M. Helt of The Post Gazette felt that along with the "wonderful sense of middle school dynamics", Stead's depiction of New York City in the 1970s was superb. Quattlebaum considered no character to be minor; each plays an important part in the story. Caitlin Augusta of School Library Journal found the setting to be "consistently strong. The stores—and even the streets—in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways".
Reviewers praised how Stead made every small detail matter. Augusta Scattergood of the Christian Science Monitor enjoyed the detailed work: "The beauty of Stead's writing is found in the way she weaves subplots and settings together seamlessly. Richard's stolen shoe drops into place. A reference to forbidden grapes is tied up sweetly. Stolen $2 bills? Another part of the enigma explained by the end." Edginer agreed, commenting that despite the small size of the novel compared to other popular books, When You Reach Me is a "taut novel, every word, every sentence, has meaning and substance." Publishers Weekly added that even the smallest of details—Miranda's name, her strange habits and why she carries A Wrinkle of Time with her—have a reason for their inclusion by the end of the novel.
2010 Newbery Award
When You Reach Me was announced the winner of the 2010 Newbery Award on January 18, 2010, but a worker at Random HouseRandom House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
had tweeted
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
the result 17 minutes prior the official announcement. The tweet was quickly taken down when the mistake was noticed. The judges chose the novel for making the small details important to the plot. Chairwoman of the Newbery committee Katie O'Dell felt that "Every scene, every nuance, every word is vital both to character development and the progression of the mystery that really is going to engage readers and satisfy them". The committee was "very excited about this book because it is exceptionally conceived, finely crafted and highly original".
Awards and nominations
| Award | Year | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Andre Norton Award Andre Norton Award The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, named to honor prolific science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton , is a yearly juried award presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to the author of an outstanding young adult science fiction or... |
2009 | |
| The New York Times The New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization... Notable Book |
2009 | Listed |
| Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month... Best Children's Books |
2009 | Listed |
| Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents... Best Children's Book of the Year |
2009 | Listed |
| School Library Journal School Library Journal The School Library Journal is a monthly magazine with articles and reviews for school librarians, media specialists, and public librarians who work with young people. Articles cover a wide variety of topics, with a focus on technology and multimedia. Reviews are included for preschool to 4th grade,... Best Book of the Year |
2009 | Listed |
| Booklist Booklist Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online... Editors' Choice |
2009 | Listed |
| Horn Book Fanfare | 2009 | Listed |
| Newbery Medal Newbery Medal The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ... |
2010 | Won |
| ALA Notable Children's Book | 2010 | Listed |
| Indian Paintbrush Book Award Indian Paintbrush Book Award The Indian Paintbrush Book Award is an award given annually to books nominated and voted on by children in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in Wyoming. The award was first given in 1986... |
2011 |