Goodbye Stranger
Rebecca Stead
Wendy Lamb Books
On Sale: August 4th
If I had to pick one talent to define Rebecca Stead’s writing, it’s how she conveys such sophisticated ideas through simply stated language. We know she can put together plots that drop draws. We know adults have selected her work to live on in the cannon of children’s literature. And we know that her stories excite kids. Well, we’re about to discover that Rebecca Stead can shape a controversial conversation that nobody is having with an audience that nobody wants to acknowledge is at risk. Goodbye Stranger confronts the handling and the mishandling of children who are sending sexually provocative pictures of themselves to their friends.
The line between Young Adult and Middle Grade literature has been pretty clear. Sex, drugs, rock & roll is for young adults, thirteen/fourteen and up. It’s not that children as young as 5th grade haven’t explored their sexuality before. But, with the access this generation has to technology, evidence of this experimentation spirals, forcing adults to intervene. We can try to prevent it with cautionary tales, by careful monitoring, or by prohibiting apps most likely to enable the behavior but we aren’t going to stop it from happening. And when, inevitably, a student sends a personal picture to a classmate, believing it will remain private, and it circulates around the school, we react very strongly. Of course we do. What they perceive to be flirtation carries the weight of child pornography. And it can blind us to the question, “Are the consequence we’ve imposed inflicting unintentional damage?”
This is where we need stories to shape our attitudes. We need those rare adults able to internalize the world through the eyes of a child, giving their voice to the vulnerabilities overlooked by grown-ups. And then there’s Rebecca Stead.
Bridge, Emily, and Tab are the kind of friends who take their third grade, no-fighting pact to heart. Emily’s talent for soccer and blossoming body are attracting a lot of attention from the older kids. After trading a series of escalating pictures with her new crush, Emily wants to take something special, just for him. Through the eyes of a mysterious character, readers hear about a different type of friendship. One that finds you grasping for the person you once knew because you’re not ready to admit she’s only getting meaner. When Emily has to face the worst-case scenario, everything takes a turn for the unexpected.
There’s no way to summarize Goodbye Stranger without severely cheapening its magic. Just like with When You Reach Me, I’m okay with just saying that there’s nothing to compare it to. But unlike the Newbery winner, Rebecca Stead manages to defy expectations for a story solely within the confines of realistic fiction. Good characters are believable, you want to spend more time with great characters, and then there’s characters you wish were real, and then there’s characters that restore your confidence in humanity. There are a couple of major events that happen as simply as they should while every other detail along the way is refreshingly unique. Under normal circumstances, we refer to these moments as plot twists or character revelations but in a story this fluid, they’re as natural as breathing. And let’s not overlook a mystery woven with such deft, it enables the rest of the story to unfold without overshadowing what makes this such a special story: it’s an alternate template for how students, teachers, and parents could approach a difficult problem in a more empathetic manner.
Goodbye Stranger is a PSA for not chastising kids for being a product of their environment. Only Rebecca Stead manages to tell a story with a message, as opposed to a message with a story. After Emily’s picture comes to light, Bridge’s Mom tells her a story about getting her ears pierced without permission when she was her age. Bridge’s grandmother made her mother remove the earnings with the message that until she turns 18, her body actually belonged to her. Bridge’s mother ends by telling Bridge that her grandmother was wrong, her body was hers, just as Bridge’s body belongs to her. When a Newbery medalist starts an important conversation, their perspective is accompanied by an inherent credibility. I’m very grateful that this topic is finally being held up to the light. People like Rebecca Stead make me proud to work with children an with children’s literature.
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