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Loading... When You Reach Me (2009)by Rebecca Stead
Lovely, clever homage to Wrinkle in Time and 70s Manhattan. ( )A wonderful and compelling story. Stead drops hints very carefully and builds suspense well; while I figured out several of the plot points well before Miranda did, I still enjoyed reading how she realizes what's going on, and there were a couple twists that I didn't expect. (And I'm jealous of Miranda's Christmas present.) This is not necessarily my type of book, but I did enjoy reading it. The outline of the story left a lot up to the imagination and kept me curious and guessing about what was going on. The idea of time travel is present from cover to cover before the reader even realizes it. This is a book that once you go through it once, you're very tempted to go through it again. WATCH BOOK TRAILER Sixthgrader Miranda lives in 1978 New York City with her mother and is never without her favorite book A Wrinkle in Time. When she starts to receive a series of notes that claim to want to save her life, Miranda begins to believe they are coming from someone who knows the future. This is the 2010 Newbery Medal winner. This is the 2010 Newbery Medal winner. All I can say is “wow”! This is such an incredible and original book. It takes place in the 1970’s. The story centers around Miranda and her mother and the friends they make along the way. The mom is trying to get on the game show the $20,000 Pyramid. So the chapters are all done as categories from the show. The story is told by Miranda to an, as yet, unidentified person. It is a story of family, friendship, sacrifice, understanding, and love. There is also an air of mystery to the story, as well as humor. It will keep you guessing to the end
...a story in which characters really come alive during those few months we spend with them, when their lives are shaped for ever. In this taut novel, every word, every sentence, has meaning and substance. A hybrid of genres, it is a complex mystery, a work of historical fiction, a school story and one of friendship, with a leitmotif of time travel running through it. Most of all the novel is a thrilling puzzle. Stead piles up clues on the way to a moment of intense drama, after which it is pretty much impossible to stop reading until the last page. Eventually and improbably, these strands converge to form a thought-provoking whole. Stead ('First Light') accomplishes this by making every detail count, including Mirandas name, her hobby of knot tying and her favorite book, Madeleine LEngles 'A Wrinkle in Time'. Its easy to imagine readers studying Mirandas story as many times as shes read LEngles, and spending hours pondering the provocative questions it raises. Stead's novel is as much about character as story. Miranda's voice rings true with its faltering attempts at maturity and observation. The story builds slowly, emerging naturally from a sturdy premise. As Miranda reminisces, the time sequencing is somewhat challenging, but in an intriguing way. The setting is consistently strong. The stores and even the streets–in Miranda's neighborhood act as physical entities and impact the plot in tangible ways. This unusual, thought-provoking mystery will appeal to several types of readers. Was inspired by
No descriptions found. As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.… (more) |
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Popular coversRatingAverage: (4.17)
![]() Audible.comTwo editions of this book were published by Audible.com.
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