Summary
12-year old Miranda is a typical girl struggling with friends, budding romance, and conflicts with her single mother; then to complicate matters, she starts receiving mysterious notes from a stranger.
Critical Analysis
In WhenYou Reach Me, Rebecca Stead creates a fictional setting that is realistic to young readers, but becomes low fantasy when the main character Miranda starts to receive notes that predict future events and actions. On the first page, the fantasy element is introduced in an intriguing way when her mom is invited to be a contestant on a game show on April 27, 1979. Miranda was told this date would be important by the mysterious person sending the notes. Stead masterfully develops the plot of the story by revealing parts of the mystery a little at a time to build suspense, and then she concludes the story with how all of the pieces of the mystery fit together. By using the first person point of view, the reader is able to see the events through Miranda’s eyes and get a greater sense of what is happening in the story. While this story does not deliver the common themes associated with fantasy, like good conquering evil and the main character overcoming something bigger, it does convey a message of how even minor events can have a major impact on the future. For example, when Miranda’s acquaintance Marcus met her other acquaintance Julia, it seemed very minor in the story, but this event eventually helps to solve the mystery of the notes, and saves a life as well.
Review Excerpt and Awards
This Newbury Medal Award winner reads like a book you are rediscovering from your childhood. It seems like it has always been around. Perhaps that is because Stead’s writing appears so effortless, the style so natural, as she tells the story of Miranda, an eleven year- old New Yorker trying to solve a mystery whose real nature is slowly revealed as the story unfolds. The more immediate puzzle is why Miranda’s oldest, best friend should be ignoring her. This new space in her life forces Miranda to negotiate the treacherous waters of early adolescence, trying to make new friends and understand people better, learning amongst other things that material privilege might not make for a better life. When You Reach Me has well developed, authentic characters and a tight plot that has many strands to draw together by the final pages including television quiz shows, time travel and naked men running through the streets of New York. A satisfying read that should remain popular as long as the classic A Wrinkle in Time to which it pays homage. Annalise Taylor, Carousel
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Andre Norton Award, 2009
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John Newbery Medal, 2010
Strengths and Weaknesses
The greatest strength of When You Reach Me is that the characters reflect the thoughts and feelings of the audience of young adult readers. Miranda has a best friend named Sal that she does everything with, but he decides he needs to make other friends other than Miranda. For the first time, Miranda has to reach out to others and try to make connections with them. This leads to some good friends and even her first kiss. One touching moment is when Miranda realizes that her one friend named Annemarie has deeper feelings for her other friend named Julia. This opens Miranda’s eyes to the thoughts and feelings that other people have. We see Annemarie’s feelings played out as she overcomes jealously that Julia could have other friends.
Another strength of the book is how Stead hands out the pieces of the story in little chunks, but it isn’t until the end of the story that all of the pieces come together to show love in a very deep and meaningful way.
Personal Response and Connections
I absolutely loved this novel. The story was so layered that just like A Wrinkle in Time, which was Miranda’s favorite book, each time you read the book you would learn not only something new about the story, but you could learn something new about yourself. This story played deeply in my mind, and will leave an imprint on my brain.
I would use this novel as merely a read-aloud that could be discussed as a class. I would love for the students to visualize themselves as the characters and trace how each character impacts another character.
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