When You Reach Me

Stead, R. (2010). When you reach me. Yearling.

 Miranda is a middle school student who lives with her mother in an apartment.  Her best friend Sal lives in the same apartment complex.  One day after school  he got punched by a boy name Marcus.   After that incident, Sal wanted to take a break from their friendship.  Her mother works at a law firm as a receptionist and is practicing to appear on a game show The $20,000 Pyramid.  A homeless man lives outside on Miranda’s street.  She calls him the laughing man because he laughs all the time. He is always saying the phrase “book bag pocket shoe.”  Miranda starts receiving letter from an unknown person.  The person writing these letter asks her to write about things in the future.   Miranda favorite book is about time travel and this plays an important part of the book.  She becomes good friends with Annemarie and Colin and they start working at a sandwich shop for a while.  Later, she begins to see that the letter are coming true and she is intrigued.  One day, Sal sees Marcus and Marcus wants to apologize for punching him, but Sal flees.  He runs into traffic, but before a truck can hit him, the homeless man gets in front of the truck. He later finds a note in Richard’s shoe and learns that the man had come from the future to save Sal’s life.  While her mom is on stage at the game show, Miranda starts thinking about a conversation she had with Marcus about time- travel and realizes he is the “laughing man” in an older Marcus and that he came from the future to save him.  The appropriate age group for this book is 8-12 year old.  I like how the author connected the notes to her everyday life.  Even though it is an older book, I think a good follow-up book would be A Wrinkle in Time by M. L’Engle.  It talks about time travel as well and is the book Miranda loved in the story.   The theme of this story is time travel.  It is first introduced when we learn Miranda’s favorite book is A Wrinkle in Time.  Next, Marcus explains to her how time travel might be possible one day.  Then, she begins to see subtle hints of time travel in the reader’s notes. Last, she realizes that the homeless man living outside is actually Marcus who has time traveled to save Sal from being hit by a truck.  The point of view of this story is told in a first person by Miranda.  The author used simple English because the audience is for young children.  The plot includes the main plot, which is notes from a mysterious writer and subplots, which talks about her friendships with Sal, Colin, Annemarie, and  Julia.  All the plots get resolved at the end of the novel.