What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Rebecca Stead

Can I just say that When You Reach Me dramatically improved after page 16?  It actually made me stay up later than I'd planned.  This is partially because I was near the end and partially because I was that interested.  I'm a morning person who usually prefers putting the book down and going to sleep, no matter how good it is.  I just tell myself it will be there when I wake up ... and when I do wake up, I pretty much roll over and grab the book.  No one said I can't be a well-rested bookworm.

Did I see the ending coming?  Yes.  The ending was not surprising.  That did not detract from the book, though, because it was a joy to watch the main character discover the ending.  I wonder if that's how God feels.  I'll have to think on that.  Speaking of things like God, I've had a couple dreams recently which were narrated.  True story.  I was watching the people in my dream (I don't tend to be in my dreams, I usually watch other people) and there was this voice narrating what was happening.  I even stole a line from a dream-narrator and wrote it down in my ideas notebook.

When You Reach Me was an interesting story, and not hard to follow once I figured out that the narrative was switching from past to present every few chapters.  I've never lived in New York, but Stead grew up there, and it shows.  The story is set there, and the details are both authentic and sound so second nature to the character that it does not sound like the author is trying to convince me the story is real.  It just sounds natural and, if you set the time-travelling aside, real.

It's definitely a young adult novel.  It reads easily and its themes (friendship and the parent-child relationship, especially) are those characteristic of that section in the library.  A young adult novel does not necessarily mean the writing is worse than in adult literature, and this book helps to prove that.  Overall, a good book which has the power to teach without sounding at all didactic.