Analyses of Rebecca Stead’s Popular Science Fiction †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Analyses of Rebecca Steads Popular Science Fiction. Answer: When You Reach Me is a science fiction with a touch of mystery. It is a Newbery Medal-winningnovel for the children which is written by Rebecca Stead. This book has been granted to be an appropriate text for children due to various reasons. This particular novel has achieved reviewers praise for its fantastic as well as appealing concept and its life like characters. It has realistic setting which is the city of New York along with which the author has matched the amazing sense of middle school dynamics (Crisp et al., 2016). The story revolves round a character who exactly matches the age of the readers which the children prefer as they can relate with the actions of the characters or the protagonist. These are the chief factors for the books success. Despite these affirmative facts this book has various factors which may have a far reaching negative influence on the children (Commonsensemedia.org, 2018). This discussion critically analyses Rebecca Steads popular science fiction When You Reach Me whether it fulfils al the criteria of the children literature. The protagonist of this novel is Miranda who lives with just another girl of 14 years. She is growing up in 1970s New York City with the average pre-teen friends. Unlike the readers she has fights, anxiety as well as teenage angst (Gunn, 2016). She lives with her mother in an apartment. Her mother has a boyfriend, Richard. He spends much time with Miranda and her mother. In this novel, Miranda is a latch-key kid therefore very cautious about her moves as well as life. she walks home from her school carefully, predominantly tries to avoid an insane old vagrant (Commonsensemedia.org, 2018). This man lives near their building therefore, Miranda wants to be more careful. However, her mother knows all these and because of his insane cackling, he is referred to be as the laughing man. The actual problem beguines when Miranda's best friend, Sal, gets punched by another boy and abruptly ends the friendship with her. After this particular incident, Miranda begins to get strange notes. The not es frighten Miranda firstly because it has an anonymous writer who wants to save the life of her and friend and instead wants Miranda to write a letter for him. The careful Miranda cannot doubt anyone but feels anxious partly because all of these notes correctly predict the future events, such as the date her mom appears as a contestant on "$20,000 Pyramid." However, Miranda tries to forget her friendship with Sal and develops new friendship with classmates Colin and Annemarie. This is because Annemarie also has gone through the same pain of break up with her best friend. Here, one can find ample instances of the teenage trouble which the children can easily relate with. Later, Miranda meets Marcus, who punched Sal and develops a deep friendship with the boy. Seeing the book, A Wrinkle in Timewhich Miranda used to carry always, Marcus delivers thought-provoking explanation on that book. These two discuss the probability of time travelling during which Miranda realizes that Marcus is extremely intelligent. One day when she is returning from school, Miranda finds Sal running from Marcus. He suddenly runs into the traffic hence is almost hit by a bus. The laughing man who used to stand under the apartment of Miranda kicks him out of the way and dies in his place. This is the process where the laws of time and space untangle themselves as the laughing man saves Sal from the accident but sacrificed himself. Now Miranda understands the most impossible truth. She finally realizes that the laughing man, who is originally future Marcus as the old man, used to send her those anonymous notes. He came back from future only to save the life of Sal. Marcus and the crazy man were one and the same. And the confusion with the letter is also clear that makes Miranda realise that her job is to write letter to the present-day Marcus which will explain the incidents and actions that will transpire as well as remind him the process to return to the past when he discovers the process of time travelling. By using A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline LEngle as the basis of her understanding of the process of time travel, Miranda will try to manage the whole thing. The plots of the novel thus however, keeps the readers attracted. Stead's novel When You Reach me is as much about the characters as the story (Commonsensemedia.org, 2018). The protagonists voice rings factual with the faltering attempts at the maturity as well as observation. This story is built slowly, as it emerges naturally from the sturdy premise. As Miranda recalls, the time sequence is somehow challenging, yet in some intriguing way. The setting of the novel is very much reliable therefore, consistently strong. The streetsin and even the store of Miranda's neighbourhood act as the physical entities which impact its plot in all perceptible ways. This unusual, thought-provoking mystery have appealed to numerous types of the readers (Kokkola, 2015). One of the most important reason why this particular novel can be an appropriate choice for the children because it is completely based upon the concept of time travelling. Here, the children can find that the Miranda and Marcus discussing about the theory of relativity by Einstein. Time travel has always been an interesting subject among the children as this allows their imagination to open up in various ways and make everything possible. This gives the scope for the teachers to arrange for a fun activity with this theme. They can pair all students off then allow them to pick one place they want travel back in time. Between the pair one students may write about his wish to go to past another to future. By combining their stories, they can learn about their trips while traveling through time. The style of storytelling that Rebecca Stead has chosen to utilise in this particular book is very clear as well as concise with the emphasis on the dialogues versus narrative. The story is written in first person, where the protagonist Miranda relates her life and incidents as exactly how she sees them through her eyes. Miranda is extremely straightforward as she narrates the points with only little trepidation or teenage nervousness in her opinions and thoughts. She seems to be wise and matured beyond her age which is reflected in her speech and ideology. As mentioned before the narrative style of the author is highly praising (Clark et al., 2015). She uses small details of all the incidents which brings about the motive and actions of all the characters. These small details help to create a better picture of the world where the protagonist and all other characters live and operate. The deeper ideology of mans psychology has been demonstrated very subtly where the mother of Miranda says that every people move around with some invisible veils concealing their faces but at certain or acute moments, their veils are lifted that make everything clear. She also says this is not due to any magic or blessings of gods, but it's due to the distraction of people by the littlest things that make them ignore the important ones. The theme of friendship is one of the most overarching themes in the novel When You Reach Me. From the very beginning, all the characters are overwhelmed with the fact how to keep or let go of their friends. This has made the novel so much popular among the children. This theme teaches that one requires to sacrifice one selves while some are sacrificing others. This particular theme of friendship is appropriate for the age group of this book, as this friendship theme also plays centrally the lives of the young adults. Another important fact to remember while teaching this novel, is its theme of racism which overlaps with the theme of friendship (Koss, 2015). All of the friends of Miranda come from different backgrounds therefore identifies the country to be the proverbial melting pot for which Miranda sacrifices her part time job. The process through which all the characters navigate the friendships can help the pre-teenage readers understand the importance and dependability of frien dship in their lives both in present as well as in future (Langley et al., 2015). However, in spite of having all these positive influences in the minds of the young readers, there are some negative elements present in the novel. There is a presence of violence and profanity which cannot be present in the text books of the children (Van Coillie Verschueren, 2014). Moreover, the protagonist is a teenager yet she mentions her own experience of kissing Colin. In addition to this, there are incidents of sex and mention of homosexuality which no parents would prefer a text book may have (Serafini, 2015). Moreover, the text talks about many immoral aspects of life which the teenagers must not follow such as stealing and lying. Here are many instances of adults hiding the truth or lying to save themselves. Moreover, in this novel there is a mention of nudity regarding the process of time travel. However, these factors affect the minds of the teenagers extremely therefore, it would be better if these sections can be avoided while teaching or studying (Stone Conrad, 2017 ). Therefore, it can be said that the novel, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, is a part fantasy, part mystery and part realism where all the characters are as realistic as they come. The theme of teenage angst is a peculiarity which most of the people can recount which the characters of the novel have created down to an art form. The style of narrating the story has a visualising effect that influence the young readers and let them imagine any picture of the characters or situation without any proper barriers. There is a quest for friendship which is the chief element of socialisation. Here Miranda is able make various friends thus unravel the mystery of the notes. All these themes are exactly perfect for the age group and assign with the criteria that a childrens text book needs to have. They appeal the intellectual level of children hence suitable for the students. References: Clark, E. R., Flores, B. B., Smith, H. L., Gonzlez, D. A. (2015).Multicultural literature for Latino bilingual children: Their words, their worlds. Rowman Littlefield. Commonsensemedia.org. (2018).When You Reach Me - Book Review.Commonsensemedia.org. Retrieved 2 March 2018, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/when-you-reach-me Crisp, T., Knezek, S. M., Quinn, M., Bingham, G. E., Girardeau, K., Starks, F. (2016). What's on Our Bookshelves? the Diversity of Children's Literature in Early Childhood Classroom Libraries.Journal of Children's Literature,42(2), 29. Gunn, A. A. (2016). Teachers Moving Forward on a Cultural Self-Awareness Spectrum: Diverse Children, Museums, and Young Adult Literature.Multicultural Perspectives,18(4), 214-220. Kokkola, L. (2015). Children's Literature and Learner Empowerment: Children and Teenagers in English Language Education. Janice Bland. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013. 298 pages. Koss, M. D. (2015). Diversity in contemporary picturebooks: A content analysis.Journal of Children's Literature,41(1), 32. Langley, A. K., Gonzalez, A., Sugar, C. A., Solis, D., Jaycox, L. (2015). Bounce back: Effectiveness of an elementary school-based intervention for multicultural children exposed to traumatic events.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology,83(5), 853. Serafini, F. (2015). Multimodal literacy: From theories to practices.Language Arts,92(6), 412. Stone, C., Conrad, D. (2017). Preparing Today to Empower Future Learners: Pre-service teachers experiences selecting evaluating childrens literature for quality and use in PreK-6th grade integrated literacy/science instruction.The Language and Literacy Spectrum,27(1), 3. Van Coillie, J., Verschueren, W. P. (2014).Children's literature in translation: Challenges and strategies. Routledge.