When You Reach Me

[tempestsarekind]

Instead of doing anything useful today (well, besides a load of laundry), I accidentally read a book. (It was a very short book.) It's a children's book called When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which was recommended in this book by the editors of Horn Bookhttp://www.hbook ( Read more... )

Comments

[viomisehunt]

Oh goody. I wanted to find something that would get my granddaughter away from the world of Edward and Bela. She would love this I think. Thanks

[tempestsarekind]

Glad to have been of service!

Also, if your granddaughter likes supernatural romance, might I recommend The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope?
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780618177363-1
It's one of my favorite books. And The Sherwood Ring (same author) is delightful:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780618150748-0

ETA: Oh, and probably anything by Holly Black. I read White Cat recently (there's a capsule review of it under my "children's books" tag) and really enjoyed it.

[valancy_s]

I really hate book-obtuseness and so am greatly in sympathy with the frustration of your reading experience. But... A Wrinkle in Time isn't actually about time travel, right? It's about space travel that operates by collapsing the time it takes to get between two points. IIRC, they don't travel through time - in the traditional sense - until Many Waters and A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

(Not that that excuses Miranda, who should clearly be aware of the concept from all of pop culture.)

[tempestsarekind]

That's true! However, Miranda and another character have specific conversations about time travel based on A Wrinkle in Time. It's been ages since I've read the book, but apparently one of the Mrs. Ws mentions that they've traveled through time as well as space, and so the children will return five minutes after they left. The boy who mentions this in When You Reach Me, Marcus, points out that this couldn't have been the case, since if it had happened, Meg and Calvin would have seen themselves in the garden, five minutes before they left. And Miranda finds this impossible to grasp, because she keeps saying "But they haven't left yet!"

I think what bothers me is that there are three kids in this book who have read A Wrinkle in Time. Two of them apparently used the occasion to think about time travel. But Miranda, who doesn't read any other books ever and is having a time travel adventure right now, doesn't. And that just seems like author-induced thoughtlessness so as not to ruin the story.