When You Reach Me

This Christmas holiday is pretty quiet.  I remember last year I was busily trying to finish up the corrections for my PhD thesis because I was about to start teaching in Los Angeles during UCLA's Winter Quarter.  Actually the last couple of Christmas holidays have been pretty busy, but this year I managed to have time to read three Newberry award books.  One of them is When You Reach Me.  I found it very engrossing and finished it in one afternoon.

I really like the structure of the book.  There are three themes going on in this mystery sci-fi: one is time travel, one is friendship, and one is related the TV gameshow $20,000 Pyramid. The chapter titles are related to the way clues in the game show are given to its contestants.

The story is also a homage to A Wrinkle in Time, another favorite book of mine.  Miranda, the main character, is constantly rereading A Wrinkle in Time, and several characters she interacts with start discussing the physics of time travel with her because she is always carrying it around.  However, she does not travel anywhere herself.  She stays in New York during the school year 1978-1979.

The characters are all well-developed, and there is a lot of humour when they interact.  One passage explains that when Miranda feels scared about walking around in New York City and is scarred of a stranger, she copes by turning to the person she feels anxious about and asking "Do you have the time?"  Miranda reasons that the strategy shows: I know you are there, but I've chosen to acknowledge you as a potential friend. Also, I have no watch or anything expensive and I am not worth mugging.

In another scene, Miranda is explaining to Belle, a friendly green grocer at a local shop that she spends time in, about the plot of A Wrinkle in Time. 
"Does this Meg character have a boyfriend in the book?" Belle asks.
"Um... sort of." Miranda says.  "But that's not the point."
Louisa May Alcott would be pleased to know that stories with girls have a weighty plot, not driven by romantic interested alone, and much more to to say about the world around them.

I think the book is brilliant, and I can see why it not only won the Newberry Award in 2010, but also 8 other awards including Publishers Weekly, the School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews' best (children's) book of the year, and listed as a notable book on The New York Times list for 2009.