When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Miranda knows her mom wants to be on The $20,000 Pyramid.  It’s their ticket out of the dingy apartment.  Miranda’s mom works at a law firm, and her boyfriend Richard, aka Mr. Perfect, works there too.  And everywhere Miranda goes, whether home or school or Belle’s store, she brings her copy of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time with her.  She loves the story of Meg and time travel and rescuing her father.  But when she starts getting mysterious notes, Miranda doesn’t know what’s going on.  She has to unravel the mystery of what the notes mean, who the Laughing Man by the mailbox really is, and what’s going on with her friends.  And the truth is a lot stranger than even Miranda can imagine.

When You Reach Me won the Newberry Medal for 2009.

Review by Kathleen

London Calling by Edward Bloor

Martin Conway goes to a private prep school in New Jersey, which he hates, when his grandmother dies, leaving him an old radio his grandfather had when he worked in the Amerian Embassy in London in World War II.  This is a story of three times – 2019, when Martin is telling this story from the Embassy in London, 2003, when he is a student in New Jersey, and 1940, during the London Blitz.  Before Martin’s grandmother died, she kept talking about a young boy named Jimmy, and one night when Martin falls asleep by the radio, he meets Jimmy, who is a young boy in 1940.  Present day readers may know how the war turns out, but for some, part of the interest is in learning about the people the history books and encyclopedias don’t mention, like the firefighters, and the civil servants, and the secretaries, and the evacuees.

London Calling is an intriguing work of fiction, and readers will be asking themselves, when the time comes, what can I do to help?

Review by Kathleen