THERE is a scene in The Mozart Season when the main character, Allegra, starts getting stressed about not being like other children her age. Her brother who is by no means your average teenager either, starts taking the piss, teasing her about the tragedy of not wanting to hang out at malls all day and obsess about boys and clothes.
Allegra does worry about her appearance and is starting to feel prickly about the opposite sex, but what she’s mostly concerned about is playing Mozart’s 4th violin concerto just right.
If she did spend all her time doing her nails and styling her hair, Allegra would of course be in another book, perhaps by Cecily von Ziegesar or Zoey Dean. However, like most of the young protagonists in critically acclaimed, award-winning children’s and YA novels, Allegra is not a typical kid.
Usually, these characters so beloved of award committees are complex and eccentric individuals who think deeply and feel intensely, and are prone to bouts of melancholy. They also usually love to read.
Perhaps they are created in the image of the writers who remember only too well their youth, buried in books while their peers sunned themselves in barely-there bikinis. Perhaps the award committee members are wishful thinkers, wanting to believe that these kids do exist outside the pages of the books they are in. However, I doubt they reflect the reality of most American or British or (name any nationality) children.
That’s why I love them though. I love the quirky characters, the unusual love of words, the over-active imagination, the overwrought emotions. Thing is, these characters escape being and sounding like every melodramatic, emo teen you’ve ever known because they usually really do have something serious to deal with. (Note to emo teens: Please stop talking about and posting on Facebok and Twitter every minor detail in your life as though it’s a major catastrophe. It’s just embarrassing.)
Miranda the heroine of When
You Reach Me is one of these quirky characters with complex lives and interesting,
complicated relationships with those around her. She reads too — and
re-reads (over and over again) Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which is not one of my favourites, but, hey,
that’s OK — at least the child reads.
Miranda lives in
Miranda used to have a best friend, Sal, who lives in
her building, but who now avoids her. She makes two new friends, Annemaries and
Colin, and the three of them get lunchtime jobs at a diner. Then there’s Julia
the poor little rich (and snobbish) girl at school, and Marcus whom Miranda
can’t quite figure out.
When You Reach Me won this year’s Newbery Medal. It’s about friendship and trust, which are the bits I really like about it. It’s also a mystery, which I found interesting and curious and involving, but I didn’t really understand when all, at the end, is revealed. It’s not that it didn’t make sense but time travel always does my head in. I’m sure it will all be crystal clear when I re-read the book, which I will, just as I re-read all the other books about unusual children who read books and think about life, and care about a lot more than their wardrobe and their first kiss.
When You Reach Me won the 2010 Newbery Medal.
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