Rebecca Stead

When You Reach Me took the Newbery in 2010, and it is a puzzle box: a girl in 1970s New York starts receiving notes from someone who knows what has not happened yet, while she rereads A Wrinkle in Time and works a job on a game show set. The structure resolves only on the last page and rewards an immediate second reading, which is rare in books written for eleven-year-olds. The List of Things That Will Not Change is quieter, about a girl whose father is marrying a man and who is about to acquire the sister she has always wanted. Stead trained as a lawyer first and writes from Manhattan.