Book rec: When You Reach Me

[labellementeuse]

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, is a middle-grade novel that is yet another reminder of the fact that some of the most beautiful and precisely elegant writing being done today is being done for children and young adults. Children do not tolerate wasteful writing and, like Bloomability, Bridge To Terabithia, The World Around the Corner and The Giver before it, When You Reach Me is a perfect example of how this leads to writing that is not merely nice or thoughtful but refined and artful.

It is 1978. Miranda is 12 years old. She lives with her mom in New York. Her favourite book is A Wrinkle In Time and her best friend just stopped speaking to her. Then Miranda starts getting notes from the future. When You Reach Me is the letter Miranda writes back.

Christmas Vacation

I sat on the couch and closed my eyes. I pictured the world. I pictured the world millions of years ago, with crazy clouds of gas everywhere, and volcanoes, and the continents bumping into each other and then drifting apart. Okay. Now life begins. It starts in the water, with tiny things, microscopic, and then some get bigger. And one day something crawls out of the water onto land. There are animals, then humans, looking almost all alike. There are tiny differences in color, the shape of the face, the tone of the skin. But basically they are the same. They create shelters, grow food, experiment. They talk; they write things down.

Now fast-forward. The earth is still making loops around the sun. There are humans all over the place, driving in cars and flying in airplanes. And then one day one human tells another human that he doesn’t want to walk to school with her anymore.

“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.

It did.

I tried again. I pictured the world, all pretty blue-green and floating out in space, creatures and forests and deserts and cities. I brought North America into focus, the United States, the East Coast, New York City. Kids are walking down the street toward school. One kid has green suede boots. One has a charge account at Gold’s. One has keys in her pocket.

“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.

It did.

Read this book - another addition to my list of great middle-grade novels. I don't even want to be a writer, but if I could write like Stead, I think I would.