★★★★★ 4
Well-written, twisty novel for middle school children
Format: Kindle
This is Kelly’s second Newbery Medal, the first being for *Hello, Universe* in 2018. Both are well-written novels for middle-grade children and should have a lot of appeal for that age.
It's the year 1999, early fall, an apartment complex in Delaware. 12-year-old Michael is worried that the Y2K bug will cause the collapse of civilization on January 1, 2000. He has been stealing cans of food to create an emergency stash under his bed. He has started a new school, and his only friends are the apartment complex maintenance man and his high-school-age after-school babysitter, Gibby. Michael’s father is dead, and his mother works long hours to make ends meet.
One day a strange kid shows up in the complex, dressed in unusual clothing and asking odd questions like, “What year is this?” It doesn’t take an experienced science fiction reader to suspect that this kid, Ridge, is from the future. He is interested in observing late 20th Century American culture. But he also wants Michael and Gibby to help him figure out how to get back to the future without interfering with the past and thus changing his own timeline. The 1999 part of the story is interspersed with notes about the future and the panicked dialog of Ridge’s family as they try to investigate what happened to him.
It probably doesn’t have many new ideas for adult readers, but it will be surprising and exciting for readers ages 12 and up
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Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2025
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