Stead, R. (2009). When you reach
me. New York, NY: Wendy Lamb Books.
Time travel…is it possible? Miranda and Sal are best friends and have
been since they were small. They are now
in 6th grade and things start to change when Sal gets punched by a
kid new to the neighborhood. Now Miranda
is on her own walking home from school by the laughing man, but she finds a new
friend, Annemarie, at school. Things
start to get weird as Miranda starts to find small notes telling her the
future, before it happens. She tries to
figure out who could be writing the notes and leaving them for her to
find. The notes tell her that her
friend’s life will be saved, but which friend and how? Miranda is trying desperately to figure the
clues out, but will she be in time?
Stead uses A Wrinkle in Time as Miranda’s favorite book to help introduce this
science fiction work and clue the reader into time travel as a possibility,
however I did not pick up on the clue.
There are so many subplots going on the book that the time travel hit me
out of left field. We come to find out
that the laughing man played a very important role in the story, however his
character is a minor one for most of the book even though we see him regularly
as Miranda comes and goes from school. Stead does a great job of tying together
seemingly unrelated events to where we believe time travel happened in this
story because Miranda is telling the story through a letter she was told to
write to help the time traveler help save her friend’s life. Great for middle school level.
Other similar books:
Liar
and Spy by Rebecca Stead
See
you at Harry’s by Jo Knowles
Out
of My Mind by Sharon Draper
Flipped
by Wendelin Van Draanen
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