When You Reach Me

ISBN: 0385737424

Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction

Published: July 14, 2009

This book won the Newberry Medal in 2010. It is a great read about a young girl in the middle of multiple conflicts. She has trouble with friendships, parental guidance, and a secret admirer. The admirer seems to know more about her than he should. He can predict the actions that will play out in the future. The book deals with time travel, mystery, love, action, and growing up. 

A review from borders.com 

Children's Literature Review: Charmingly eccentric and impossible to categorize, this middle grade novel pays homage to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time while employing many of that book's elements as it crisscrosses the boundaries between reality and fantasy, time travel and mystery. Three distinct storylines give the novel momentum: Miranda's mother's forthcoming contestant role on "The $20,000 Pyramid" game show, Miranda's friend Sal being punched by the erudite yet seemingly socially inept Marcus, and the homeless man whom Miranda and her friends dub "the laughing man." A host of secondary characters play significant roles as well. Stead completely nails both the endearing optimism of her pre-teen characters and their earnest attempts to make meaning of the world while achieving the perfect V-cut. The game show subplot is reflected in the book's chapter headings (e.g., "The Winner's Circle," "Things That Fall Apart," "Things You Realize"). The author plays with the construct of time throughout the novel, using letters that foretell the future, manipulating tense, and framing the entire novel as a second-person narrative in which Miranda is addressing the writer of the letters. If the text feels packed, it is--and nothing is wasted. The movement between the ordinary and the fantastic creates a kind of magical realism, in which the extraordinary is every bit as acceptable as the everyday. Amusing, bemusing and occasionally plain puzzling, this book works its way to a deliciously twisty ending. It is an interesting, multi-layered book that can be read and interpreted at many levels.

How I would use it

I love Sci Fi, and this would apply. It would interest students by being very relatable to their age group. The characters are very much middle-school personalities. It has suspense and mystery, and would be engaging and a great book for students to practice prediction.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

ISBN: 157270036X
Genre: Multicultural fiction
Published: July 11, 1960

My Personal Review
This is a great novel and seems to be a staple in classrooms across the U.S. It is Lee's only novel. The novel comments on racism, gender roles, class issues, and education. It tells of basic human problems and issues as well as minority issues; it is relevant to any reader at any age. Considering the novel is 50 years old, it is pretty amazing this novel has held up to the test of time.



A review by Phoebe Adams
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/classrev/mocking.htm
Two other novels have turned up which may be classified as respectable hammock reading, if anybody reads in hammocks anymore. Walk Egypt by Vinnie Williams is well-written soap opera, and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is sugar-water served with humor. . . .
To Kill A Mockingbird is a more successful piece of work. It is frankly and completely impossible, being told in the first person by a six-year-old girl with the prose style of a well-educated adult. Miss Lee has, to be sure, made an attempt to confine the information in the text to what Scout would actually know, but it is no more than a casual gesture toward plausibility.
The book's setting is a small town in Alabama, and the action behind Scout's tale is her father's determination, as a lawyer, liberal, and honest man, to defend a Negro accused of raping a white girl. What happens is, naturally, never seen directly by the narrator. The surface of the story is an Alcottish filigree of games, mischief, squabbles with an older brother, troubles at school, and the like. None of it is painful, for Scout and Jem are happy children, brought up with angelic cleverness by their father and his old Negro housekeeper. Nothing fazes them much or long. Even the new first-grade teacher, a devotee of the "Dewey decimal system" who is outraged to discover that Scout can already read and write, proves endurable in the long run.
A variety of adults, mostly eccentric in Scout's judgment, and a continual bubble of incident make To Kill A Mockingbird pleasant, undemanding reading.

 And another good site for reviews:
http://www.allreaders.com/topics/info_1072.asp

How I'll use it:

This is a great coming of age story. There are elements in this story that almost anyone in the class could relate to. I could link it up with a government/law unit, or a unit on racial persecution and heroes.