Right Back at You

January 1, 2025
Two misfit 12-year-olds find friendship via a wormhole. It's 2023, and Mason is having a rough time at school and at home, so his parents send him to a therapist. She suggests that he write a letter about his problems to "anybody or nobody." Although Mason decides to write to Albert Einstein, a quirk of spacetime causes the letter he's hidden in his closet to instead find its way to a girl named Talia, who's living in western Pennsylvania in 1987. It takes a while for both kids to believe they're not the victims of some elaborate prank, but they become close friends and confidants through typical tweenage struggles--separated parents, sibling friction, bullying, and antisemitism from peers. (Talia refers to herself as "half-Jewish," and while white-presenting Mason isn't Jewish, as a New Yorker he has Jewish friends and classmates.) Both children in this epistolary novel put an unrealistic amount of detail into their letters, and at many points their voices sound awkwardly adult, especially when they're discussing Talia's experience of anti-Jewish bigotry. Readers will quickly become invested in Mason's and Talia's lives, however, and the mystery of how, and why, they're connected is satisfying enough to keep the story moving forward. Readers aware of recent controversies surrounding Alice Walker may be surprised to see her cited positively in a book that addresses the scourge of antisemitism. An absorbing introduction to the paradoxes and possibilities of time travel.(Fiction. 10-14)

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January 6, 2025
Ever since his father abandoned the family and his school bully upped the ante on his taunting, middle schooler Mason has been having a tough time. When his therapist asks him to “write a letter to anybody or nobody,” Mason addresses his correspondence to Albert Einstein, hoping the theoretical physicist can use time travel to “transport me to a time and place where things aren’t as sucky.” He then throws the letter in his closet and, to his surprise, receives a response the next day from someone named Talia. Even stranger is that, while Mason lives in 2023 New York City, Talia purportedly hails from 1987 western Pennsylvania. Soon, the 12-year-olds are communicating regularly across space and time via their closets, and Mason learns that Talia is teased for being Jewish, her best friend is freezing her out, and the baseball coach won’t let her try out for the team because she’s a girl. Mackler (Not if I Can Help It) moves the plot along swiftly and satisfyingly as the resourceful white-cued protagonists use the time difference to encourage each other to move beyond their comfort zones. Ages 9–12. Agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House.