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Goodbye Stranger
Author:
Stead, Rebecca
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Class:
Fiction
Age: 10-14
Language: English
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LC: PZ7.S808
Grade: 5-9
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ISBN-13: 9780385743174
LCCN: 2014037289
Imprint: Wendy Lamb Books
Publisher: Random House Inc
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Pub Date: 08/04/2015
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $16.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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289 pages ; 22 cm
H 8.56",
W 5.88",
D 1.03",
0.9125 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's For Youth Interest: Popular
Brodart's Fresh Reads for Kids TIPS Selections
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Teen
Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Honorees
Children's Core Collection, 23rd ed.
Children's Core Collection, 24th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 13th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 14th ed.
Middle and Junior High Core Collection, 15th ed.
Rise: A Feminist Book Project for Ages 0-18
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Awards:
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BCCB Starred Reviews
Best Fiction for Young Adults
Booklist Editors Choice
Booklist Starred Reviews
Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices
Horn Book Fanfare
Horn Book Guide Titles, Rated 1 - 4
Horn Book Starred Reviews
Kirkus Starred Reviews
New York Times Notable Books
Notable Children's Books, ALA
Publishers Weekly Annual Best Books Selections
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
School Library Journal Best Books
School Library Journal Starred Reviews
VOYA's 5P Picks
VOYA's 5Q Picks
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly
School Library Journal
~VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine - Retired Journal)
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TIPS Subjects:
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Friendship
School Stories
Family Life
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BISAC Subjects: |
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Friendship
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Emotions & Feelings
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Peer Pressure
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LC Subjects:
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Best friends, Fiction
Family life, New York (State), New York, Fiction
Friendship, Fiction
Middle schools, Fiction
New York (N.Y.), Fiction
Schools, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Best friends, Fiction
Family life, New York (N.Y.), Fiction
Friendship, Fiction
Middle schools, Fiction
New York (N.Y.), Fiction
School stories
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Reading Programs: |
Accelerated Reader Level:
3.9
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Points: 7.0
Lexile Level:
560
Reading Counts Level:
3.2
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Points: 14.0
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles | 08/01/2015 |
| Is it possible to fall for someone as a friend? Emily's not-quite-boyfriend is angling for a special picture. Tabitha claims she has a sixth sense for the truth. Sherm finds himself falling for someone as a friend. An anonymous girl faces betrayal on Valentine's Day. Characters explore friendship, love, and the hurdles that come with change through chapters told from various points of view. Bridge cannot figure out why she survived the accident. 304pp. |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 05/15/2015 |
| Grades 5-8. Starting seventh grade means lots of changes for Bridge and her best friends Em and Tabitha. The most obvious is Em's sudden curves, which grab the attention of pretty much everyone. Other changes are more subtle, like the way Bridge starts looking forward to seeing her classmate Sherman Russo, or Tabitha's growing interest in feminism and social justice. With diverging interests and gently simmering jealousies among the threesome, it would be easy for Stead to tell an all-too-familiar tale of a crumbling tween-girl trio. But she doesn't: rather, she offers a refreshing story of three girls whose loving friendship survives fights, accepts odd habits, and offers ample forgiveness. Unfolding over a series of vignettes that alternate among Bridge, an unnamed high-school girl worried about the consequences of her betrayal of a friend, and letters Sherm writes to his absent grandfather, Stead's latest gradually teases out the nuanced feelings and motivations that guide her characters' sometimes unwise--but never disastrous--actions. Bridge and her friends are all experiencing a quietly momentous shift toward adulthood, and Stead gracefully, frankly, and humorously captures that change. Though that change is often scary, Stead shows how strongly love of all kinds can smooth the juddering path toward adulthood. Winsome, bighearted, and altogether rewarding. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The release of any new book by Newbery medalist Stead is a publishing event to circle on your calendar. Hunter, Sarah. 304p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2015. |
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| Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books | 09/01/2015 |
| R. Gr. 5-8. Seventh-grader Bridge is seeing changes come to her friendship with Tab, who's discovering social justice, and with Emily, who's burgeoning physically and enjoying the attention it's bringing her. Meanwhile, Bridge's classmate Sherm (to whom Bridge is becoming increasingly close) writes letters to his estranged grandfather. Then there's the nameless high-schooler who, on Valentine's Day, has been pushed beyond her limits by social situations at school and skips, trying to figure out how to solve her problems. These three narrative strands braid together to tell several concrete stories-Emily's sexting scandal, Bridge's growing relationship with Sherm, the nameless narrator's betrayal of a new friend to curry approval with an old one-as well as the larger story of challenging transitions. That last theme is exemplified in Sherm's writing, "Sometimes I feel like a stranger to myself too. . . . Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?" The author as usual deftly interweaves her plot strands into an organic whole, and between the multifocal plot and the exploration on growth and self-recognition, this makes an impact similar to Perkins' Newbery-winning Criss Cross (BCCB 9/05). This book, however, more deeply explores mistakes, and forgiveness, and growing away from people as well as toward them; where Stead's When You Reach Me (BCCB 9/09) had an overt science fiction slant, this is instead the science fiction of human growth, probing the strange alchemy between our past, current, and future selves. DS. 304p. THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, c2015. |
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| Horn Book | 07/01/2015 |
| Middle School. The main narrative in this new novel from the talented Stead (When You Reach Me, rev. 7/09) follows seventh-grader Bridget Barsamian, who nearly died in an accident when she was eight. A nurse's comment that she "must have been put on this earth for a reason...to have survived" confounds her still; Bridge's eventual, happy discovery of that reason is believable and moving. Stead's intricately crafted story (so many connections, so much careful foreshadowing) explores various configurations of love and friendship, and the book's two other narrative threads fittingly involve Valentine's Day. In one, Bridge's new friend Sherm writes (but doesn't send) angry letters to his beloved grandfather, who has left Sherm's grandmother and whose birthday is February fourteenth. The other, told in the second person and set entirely on that upcoming Valentine's Day, follows an unnamed high schooler agonizing over her betrayal of a good friend in order to win points with a bad friend. (Readers will appreciate the cleverly dropped hints to her identity, whether they catch them the first or second time through.) Bridge's narrative involves her longtime friendship with Tab and Emily, which suffers setbacks (but endures) as the girls find themselves at varying points on the interested-in-dating spectrum; feminism, mean girls, and platonic boy-girl friendships are just some of the issues raised. Much of the plot deals with some (underwear) selfies that go viral; opinions abound, but Bridge's mom's is the most compelling: "Your body is yours...Especially your body, Bridge. You earned it back." The handing-down of advice and wisdom from older girls and women is a welcome theme throughout the book and far too rare in female coming-of-age stories; it's just one of many reasons this astonishingly profound novel is not your average middle-school friendship tale. jennifer m. brabander. 289pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2015. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 06/01/2015 |
| Three interwoven narrative strands explore the complicated possibilities of friendship in early adolescence. Bridge (formerly Bridget) finds increasing confidence as she navigates her seventh-grade year, while, in unsent letters to his absent grandfather, classmate Sherm expresses grief and anger over changes in his family. And an unnamed, slightly older child in a second-person narrative spends a single miserable day avoiding school for reasons that are revealed at the turning point. Stead explores communication and how messages--digital or verbal, intentional and inadvertent, delivered or kept private--suffuse the awkward, tentative world of young teens leaping (or sometimes falling) from the nest in search of their new selves. From Bridge's cat-ears, worn daily from September through mid-February, to Sherm's stolid refusal to respond to his grandfather's texts, the protagonists try on their new and changing lives with a mixture of caution and recklessness. Stead adroitly conveys the way things get complicated so quickly and so completely for even fairly ordinary children at the edge of growing up with her cleareyed look at bullies and their appeal (one girl is "truly genius at being awful"), as well as her look at impulsiveness and the lure of easy sharing via text. She captures the stomach-churning moments of a misstep or an unplanned betrayal and reworks these events with grace, humor, and polish into possibilities for kindness and redemption. Superb. (Fiction. 11-14). 304pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2015. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 05/11/2015 |
| Ages 10-up. Bridget Barsamian accidentally skated into traffic at age eight, and this brush with death has made her an uncommonly introspective seventh-grader. A tight triumvirate, Bridge and her friends Tab and Em have sworn upon a Twinkie never to fight, but now Em's curves are attracting boy interest (and a request for a risque photo), while Tab's attentions are turning toward feminism and social justice. Meanwhile, Bridge has a new friend, Sherm; his share of the story unspools in letters to his estranged grandfather, who left Sherm's beloved Nonna after 50 years of marriage. Then there is an unnamed high school-age character, whose second-person chapters take place on Valentine's Day, months in the future. Keeping readers off-balance is a Stead hallmark, but it doesn't work quite as successfully here as it did in When You Reach Me and Liar and Spy, perhaps because the mystery narrator and the people she interacts with aren't as fleshed out as everyone else. That said, this memorable story about female friendships, silly bets, different kinds of love, and bad decisions is authentic in detail and emotion--another Stead hallmark. Agent: Faye Bender, Faye Bender Literary Agency. (Aug.). 304p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2015. |
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| School Library Journal | 05/01/2015 |
| Gr 6-9--Ah, seventh grade! A year when your friends transform inexplicably, your own body and emotions perplex you, and the world seems fraught with questions, and the most confusing ones of all concern the nature of love. Stead focuses on Bridge Barsamian, her best girlfriends, and her newest friend Sherm--a boy who is definitely not her boyfriend (probably). They're navigating the shoals of adolescence on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Emily has suddenly developed a figure that attracts a lot of attention, Tabitha is an increasingly committed human rights activist, and Bridge has taken to wearing a headband with black cat's ears for reasons that are unclear even to her. The seventh graders aren't the only characters working out relationships. There are married parents and divorced parents and then there's Sherm's grandfather who has suddenly left his wife of 50 years and moved to New Jersey. There's also a mysterious character whose Valentine's Day is doled out in second-person snippets interspersed within the rest of the story. Love is serious, but Stead's writing isn't ponderous. It's filled with humor, delightful coincidences, and the sorts of things (salacious cell phone photos, lunchroom politics, talent show auditions) that escalate in ways that can seem life-shattering to a 13-year-old. The author keeps all her balls in the air until she catches them safely with ineffable grace. VERDICT An immensely satisfying addition for Stead's many fans. Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY. 304p. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2015. |
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| ~VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine - Retired Journal) | 08/01/2015 |
| 5Q 5P M J. Bridge and her two best friends, Emily and Tabitha, are starting seventh grade and trying to figure out where they belong. Soccer-playing Em jumps seemingly effortlessly into the crowd of athletes. Tab, through her new English teacher Ms. Berman, aka "the Berperson," has suddenly discovered Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and all sorts of other "rights." Bridge, who has taken to wearing a cat-ear headband every day, does not play sports and is not sure what she thinks about her English teacher, but she may have found a place on the tech crew, which does all the backstage work for the different productions at their middle school. Also on the tech crew is Sherman (or Sherm), who smells like bread and is surprisingly easy to talk to. Stead's latest genre-bending novel has three separate narrative voices. Two use a limited third-person--one through Bridge's perspective, and the other Sherm's, whose viewpoint is also developed through a number of letters to his estranged grandfather. The third voice, written in a terse second-person, is an unknown character whose story brushes up against the others and takes place on Valentine's Day of the same year. Suspense grows as the two stories march closer together, until they merge in the final pages. In each of the strands, complex ethical dilemmas play out in these adolescent lives. The adults on the periphery--parents, teachers, and grandparents--are at times helpful and at times anything but, but it is the teens themselves who work through their issues in genuinely healthy and positive ways. Though the complex narrative threads may be challenging for some to navigate, this eloquent story of friendship, first love, and identity will resonate powerfully with readers.--Heather Christensen. 304p. VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES, c2015. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 08/01/2015 |
| Some may think of New York City's Upper West Side as "Seinfeld" stomping grounds, but fans of Rebecca Stead know better: These apartments, shops and streets are where Stead does her own stomping--and where the characters in her critically lauded middle grade novels live. While Stead's first novel, 2007's First Light, was set on the quite different island of Greenland, her three subsequent books are set in New York City past and present: 2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me takes place in Stead's childhood neighborhood; and Liar and Spy explores Brooklyn. Stead's new book, Goodbye Stranger, which takes place 10 blocks from where the author grew up, gives readers a window into living one's formative years in a city that's both a world-famous object of fantasy and home to lots of regular people doing regular stuff. "As soon as I started writing about childhood," Stead tells BookPage during a call to her home, "it was inevitable the characters were going to end up in New York, because that's where I've always been. It's weird to live in the same neighborhood in New York City for so long. Things change so much." She adds, "Every once in a while I have a moment: For a second, walking on Amsterdam Avenue, it feels like my childhood. It lasts about six seconds, three steps--it can be something I see or hear, music, people playing dominoes--and I think about how it was... and then it's gone." But her memories, her touchstones, do wend their way into her fiction: "Somehow, it's all feeding me." Just as the city itself is both glittery and dun-colored, modern and historic--depending on the perspective--the characters in Goodbye Stranger are figuring out who they really are as well. They consider how others see them versus what they feel inside and ponder grand-scale existential questions, too. For seventh-grader Bridget Barsamian (you can call her "Bridge"), the latter sort are front of mind. They have been since she survived being hit by a car at age 8 and a nurse commented, "You must have been put on this earth for a reason, little girl, to have survived." In the intervening years, Bridge hasn't figured out that reason. Lately it doesn't help that she's been getting homework assignments like, "Answer the question, 'What is love?'" That's heady stuff for anyone, let alone someone who's negotiating the oh-so-challenging middle school years, rife with physical and emotional changes, odd behavior from longtime friends and a tentative new friendship with a boy named Sherm. And sure, books have come before that have trod these roads--and books will come after--but Stead's approach is a moving blend of present-day and historic, romantic love and familial love, deep questions and just-for-fun pursuits like sock buns and a hilariously intense competition between Bridge's brother and his frenemy. It therefore follows that Stead likes "to read books that are a little challenging or complicated, or feel off-balance a little bit. For me, that's a great pleasure of reading, slowly doing the reader's work of putting the story together and building an understanding of what's happening. It's important to me as a reader, so I always think about that when I'm writing." To wit, Goodbye Stranger is told from three distinct points of view: Bridge, Sherm and an anonymous narrator whose identity is slowly, tantalizingly revealed. "I like the idea of the reader synthesizing the character over time," says Stead. "Hopefully it creates a little bit of a moment for the reader, because that's how people are--so different internally from how we present." That issue is also explored through the characters' texting, sharing and judging of photos and the supposed motives therein. Bodily autonomy figures in, via the... Review exceeds allowable length. Linda M. Castellitto. 304. BOOKPAGE, c2015. |
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| Horn Book Guide | 05/01/2016 |
| 1. Seventh grader Bridget nearly died in an accident when she was eight. A nurse's comment that she "must have been put on this earth for a reason" confounds her still; Bridget's eventual, happy discovery of that reason is believable and moving. Stead's intricately crafted story explores various configurations of love and friendship. This astonishingly profound novel is not your average middle-school friendship tale. jmb. 289pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2016. |
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9780385743174,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 08/23/2015 |
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