It’s all still there like a movie I can watch when I want to. I still think about the letter you asked me to write…Sometimes I work it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. The first chapter, as well as several other chapters are written in the few weeks leading up to Miranda’s mother’s appearance on $20,000 Pyramid.

However, the first chapter does not start at the beginning, but rather in the “middle” of the story.

These chapters are written in past tense.

Miranda tells the reader what happened as she mulls over which parts are most important and should be included in her letter. The events of the story begin in the fall of 1978. The notes request that Miranda write the story of all that happens to her and give it to him. The first time Miranda got a note from the unknown person she is freaked out. Miranda, who lives with her mother in New York City, has received these predictions via three notes she received. The reader is made aware that this unknown “you” has predicted events in Miranda’s life, such as that her mother gets to be on the game show, before they happen. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15, the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway. I check the box under my bed, which is where I’ve kept your notes these past few months. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street… She’s going to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid… And then there’s the date she’s supposed to show up, scrawled in blue pen on a line at the bottom of the card: April 27, 1979. It is written in first person from the point of view of 12-year-old Miranda to someone who is unknown. There is something unusual about this book that the reader notices from the first page. Or maybe it took a year of reading 50+ middle grade time travel books that don’t have what this one does–a plot that kept me on the edge of my seat, heartwarming depictions of different kinds of friendships and families, and the nostalgia-soaked setting of NYC in the the late 70’s –to allow me to fully appreciate it. This book lends itself to being read twice. I never read mysteries and I was not able to put the pieces together as quickly as I thought I should. Surprisingly, I didn’t fall in love with When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead (2009, 197 pages) the first time I read it a few years ago.

When you reach me notes