[LISTENED TO: July 12, 2015] When You Reach Me
This book was read by Cynthia Holloway.
Sarah brought this book home for us to listen to. It is intended for 9 year-olds and yet I thought the book seemed a bit more YA. Although the story deals very closely with the real day-to-day exploits of three sixth graders, there s a mystical elements that weaves its way through the story. It also deals with time travel which is what I thought the kids might have the hardest time grasping (it even hurts my head sometimes). But I think they got it.
The story is told from the point of view of Miranda (named for the Miranda rights). She is an only child being raised by a single mother in NYC in the 1970s (I wish the date had been given earlier or more clearly in the story). I loved the conceit of the book that her mother wants to win $20,000 Pyramid. And she thinks she has a chance as long as her celebrity isn’t as “dumb as a box of hair.” As a result, all of the chapter titles are titled the way the pyramid categories would be: Things you lose: things you find: etc. That was very cool.
Anyhow, Miranda’s mom works hard and has boyfriend. There’s no trouble there. The trouble comes from her best friend Sal.
Sal lives in her building. Sal’s mom is also a single mom. The moms met when Miranda moved in and she and Sal have been super close ever since–going to day care together, doing everything they could together. But lately Sal has been a little distant. And then once the incident happens, thins change for good.
1970s NYC is a tough place. Miranda’s mom has a list of rules for how to manage the city. There are even mean boys who hang out down the street and say mean things to everyone–although their rule is never to fight with little kids (so Miranda and Sal are safe). Until one of the boys, Marcus, steps away from the wall and punches Sal for no reason. And then he walks away. Miranda didn’t do anything and now Sal is acting really weird to her–she assumes it is because she didn’t help.
With Sal out of her life, Miranda makes some new friends. First there is Annemarie, a sweet girl who is nice to Miranda, and who we find out later has epilepsy. This doesn’t really figure into her character expect that she needs specific foods and that her father (who is awesome) gives her a special diet which fends off the attacks. There’s also Colin, a jokey boy. Colin gets them jobs at Jimmy’s Sandwich Shop. Jimmy is kind of a jerk, and doesn’t pay them, but he does let them help him at lunch time and lets them each have a sandwich for lunch.
The other character, Julie, is Annemarie’s friend. She believes that Miranda has never liked her and Miranda believes that Julie is stuck up. Either this was not clear in the beginning or we all missed it, but Julie is African-American. This doesn’t play into the story at all except for the way Jimmy treats her (badly). The revelation that Jimmy was racist was certainly bad, but it was a huge shock because it wasn’t obvious that Julie was black anyway–none of the four of us figured it out ahead of time.
So far so normal. But then there is the Laughing Man. He is a crazy guy who lives on their corner. He sleeps with a his head under a mailbox and he seems to be kicking into the streets. He is harmless but certainly a little scary. Miranda has spoken to him once or twice (he calls her “smart girl”) but he also says some weird phrases that no one can figure out.
Okay, even the presence of one crazy person doesn’t make the story strange. So what tips it into sci-fi? Well, Miranda starts finding notes–notes that predict the future and suggest that things are not what they seem. One note thanks her for telling “you” where the key is hidden. And soon after she realizes realize the key is missing What?
Speaking of “you,” the entire story (or at the bulk of it) is written to “you,” the person who wrote those mysterious letters. And we won’t know who or why that is for a long time.
A main touchstone for this book is Madeleine L’Engle‘s A Wrinkle in Time. It is Miranda’s favorite book and she carries it with her everywhere. Marcus the bully has also read it as well (he is quite smart), but he has a major quibble with the end of the book and whether or not the children return to their own time when they say they will. Miranda talks about the book with a bunch of people, many of whom expound upon the nature of time travel. I feel that Miranda is a little dumb about time travel when other people talk about it. If she loves Wrinkle so much she should at least be open to the various theories of time travel–perhaps its just that Holloway’s voice make her seem more exasperated about it than she means to be (or Stead wanted her this ignorant to get the theories expounded on more thoroughly).
But the other gripe I have is that this book give away so much of Wrinkle. I have not read it but it is a classic and I have always wanted to. But I feel that there are so many important plot points that Miranda has more or less told me everything. I do hope that is not true, and I hope that someday when I read it I won’t be able to predict things because of this book.
Aside from all that this book was really enjoyable and very clever. I loved the Pyramid stuff which brought me back to watching the show as a kid. I enjoyed the take on the Laughing Man and how his story plays out and I enjoyed that Marcus has so much more depth, even if he is in his own world half the time. Colin was a delightfully enigmatic character and that story line played out nicely. And finally the revelation of what was going on with Sal was revealed slowly enough hat it made it really compelling even if the actual story was so typical of sixth graders (and it was nice to have a grounded story line mixed in with the time travel talk).
And the kids liked it too.
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