Rebecca Stead.  When You Reach Me.  Wendy Lamb, 2009.  208 pages.  Age 9 to 12.

Reviews of this book abound (some good ones are linked below) so instead of a trad review, I offer you my personal response.  Don’t worry, no spoilers.  I don’t think.  Maybe you should just play it safe and read the book now.  Come back and chat after, if you want.

Back/still with me?  Cool.

I think my reading experience was skewed by the fact that I knew it was a Complicated Book with a Lot of Plot Threads that Don’t Come Together until the End.  While my conscious mind was enjoying a good story, my unconscious mind was furiously trying to piece together a puzzle.  I had a couple things figured out halfway in—laughing man, for example—but it was mostly surprises.  The book answered questions I didn’t know I had.

Recursive time travel makes my head spin, but for the sake of good storytelling I make exceptions.  This one is worth the suspension of disbelief.  Speaking of disbelief, if you’ll pardon the lazy transition, I didn’t enjoy reading A Wrinkle in Time back when I read it.  (Characters with ridiculous names like “Ms. Whatsit” put me off, for starters.)  With all due homage, this book is much better.

Two things were awkward:  the intermittent use of the second person, and the ordinal list in the “this is what happened” chapter.  Otherwise, and all the same, it was clear that a lot of planning and calculation went into this novel.  It was a very measured need-to-know presentation.  The critical details were all in place, and yet the surprises kept coming.

And just a note about the cover:  I think it’s fine.  Seriously—the mailbox has the shadow of a person.  That’s a book I want to read.

other reviews:
100 Scope Notes | Educating Alice | A Fuse #8 Production | Kids Lit | The Reading Zone