When You Reach Me

I'm afraid that Rebecca Stead took Ursula le Guin at face value when she was exposed to the quotation so beloved among writer's groups: "Sure, it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up."  I think she wanted to write the kind of children's book that Madeleine L'Engle described in her Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech:
"Even the most straightforward tales say far more than they seem to mean on the surface. Little Women, The Secret Garden, Huckleberry Finn --- how much more there is in them than we realize at a first reading. They partake of the universal language, and this is why we turn to them again and again when we are children, and still again when we have grown up."

How else can one explain the plot of When You Reach Me, permeated with references to L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and yet disingenuous about the conventions of any of the time travel literature that preceded it?

When You Reach Me is a time travel story for children who have never read a time travel story before--children who have never read A Wrinkle in Time.  It is a story with characters that seem wooden because they're all hiding something until an opportune moment.  And it's a 2010 Newbery winner. Go figure.

Here's the spoiler:  IT'S A TIME TRAVEL STORY!  But since you don't know that until the end, there are no rules.  No rules, no fun, I say.

Who could possibly like this book?  Maybe a young girl who thinks she only likes realistic fiction.