things you read again.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Review written for ADD-afflicted folks: This is a Newbery Award winning YA novel about a twelve-year-old girl in New York City. It encompasses Madeleine L'Engle, sandwich shops, losing friends, being punched in the face, gaining friends, racism, the 20,000 dollar Pyramid, divorce, two-dollar bills and kind dentists, along with a lot of other stuff I just won't mention. It's touching, it's funny, it's 200 pages of perfect.

Wanna hear me blather more praise? Read on: When I was a kid, I told people that my greatest dream in life was to win a Newbery award. And then a Pulitzer. I wanted to win both, and if I could win both at once, all the better. For as long as I can remember, I associated the Newbery award with the best sorts of books. The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Maniac McGee, Holes, Walk Two Moons, The Giver, Dear Mr. Henshaw... these were the books that not only made me into a better reader, but gave me something real to think about, not just a place to escape to. And When You Reach Me is perfect company for these books. It's a book of simple pleasures shadowed with complexity - Stead set Miranda up in 1979, away from cell phones, the internet, video game systems and everything that comes with them. Instead, Miranda reads for fun. She hangs out with her friends and listens to records. And the puzzle that sets the twisty little narrative in motion is all the more exciting.

Plot: Miranda, 12, lives with her mother in New York City. She's a latchkey kid, but she hates the term. Her mom is a paralegal and has dated a lawyer in the firm, Richard, for years. Miranda has a best friend in the apartment below hers named Sal - but one day he gets punched in the face for no reason, and everything changes. Sal won't talk to her, her Mom is chosen as a contestant for the 20,000 dollar Pyramid with Dick Clark, and she starts finding mysterious messages, addressed to her, that scare her.

And, just a little bit more: When I finished this book on the J-Church line heading home, I missed my stop. By a lot. I didn't even notice after I had put the book in my lap because I was looking into that middle distance between the novel you just read and the real world - that sort of fuzzy in between where the curtain is finally being rushed across the stage and you realize that none of this actually happened. The puzzle that this book sets up is only half the joy in reading it - in fact, some readers will probably guess at it before the book is through. The other half is Miranda's relationships, of course, and the way that quiet, slow understanding of how friends are made and kept and how life can be now that she understands a small fraction more than she did than when the book started. That "lifting of the veil" (to cop a line from the novel) is between every line, after every chapter marker. And that's probably why this book won its award.

Should you read it? Yes. Go get it.

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The Decoding of Lana Morris by Laura & Tom McNeal

The ADD review bit: Lana Morris is one of those heartwarming characters that reminds me why I read YA. The plot is there in whispers and fits, but what turns the pages here is watching a character discover her backbone and start to understand her reason to be.

Interested? Nice. Keep on keeping on: I really mean what I said up there - characters like Lana are why I read YA. They are so in touch with the base emotions - love, envy, anger, fear, sadness, grief that the disaffected tone of most modern literature is missing, and I'm never sad to see it go. Things happen, the character reacts, and usually makes the most plot-drivingly interesting decision available because a) everything when you're 12-19 is life or death and b) those mistakes and triumphs need to be made as soon as possible, because there is probably homework to get to. And Lana is a shining example of this teen trope, because her situation is already so dire. A missing father, absent mother, in a house full of children with special needs, in love with her foster father, trying to be in with the lowest common denominator of teenage thieves and lowlifes... she has a mixed bag. So of course a bit of magic realism would sock her right in the stomach and then take hold.

Plot: Lana Morris lives in a house with five special needs kids (SNKs) affectionately called "Snicks." Her foster mother is an ice queen, her foster father is dreamy. When she is mysteriously given a "Ladies Drawing Kit," she finds out that what she draws comes true. So... with so many things she wants to be true in her life, she needs to figure out: what does she want to wish for?

More: I think my favorite part about this particular novel, Lana aside, is the "be careful what you wish for" plot is thrown out the window pretty quickly. She figures out her wishes are kind of difficult to put on paper, and the magic realism takes the form of mildly freakish coincidences that could (for the cynical) remain coincidences. Instead, the wish fulfillment serves as a neat little metaphor for being able to take control of your life as much as you possibly can. And with that power in hand, she starts using it, drawing on her wish paper or just making decisions for herself, results and consequences be darned.

Also, the way the Snicks are portrayed seemed perfect. They are not glossed over and reduced to quirks. They are much more than that, and Lana's relationship with Tilly is heart warming to say the least.

Should you read it? I liked it, I know that much. But here's the thing, and it's a shame I'm only getting to this here: the Mcneals write amazing books. This is the fourth I've read, and they are all fantastic examples of why YA is more than YA. And if you are going to read only one of their books, I'd choose Crooked or Zipped. But if everything I typed above here has made you open an amazon.com window to find out what this little number is going for these days, then... rock it out. Lana's good company.