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When You Reach Me

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it has just passed GA and I hope to take it up to FA.

Thanks, Derild4921Review Me! 22:02, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is broad in coverage and well-organized. However, it will need more work to have at chance at FA. Here are my suggestions for further improvement:

  • Professional prose is often the most difficult of the FA requirements to satisfy. I note quite a few prose problems below. However, I'm sure I didn't catch them all, and it would be a good idea to ask someone to copyedit this once again. You might find a copyeditor via WP:GOCE#REQ. The more eyes, the better.

Image

  • The source link on the image-description page is dead. It should be fixed or replaced. Otherwise, fact checkers will not be able to verify the license.
  • It's not clear to me that the fair-use image of the book cover is needed for a reader to understand the subject. Would it be possible to replace the fair-use image with a free image of something relevant? An image of the writer or an image of a scene from the Upper West Side might do, for example.

Lead

  • "She receives a strange note asking her to record down future events that follow and the location of her spare key." - Tighten to "She receives a strange note asking her to record future events and the location of her spare key"?
  • "The novel contains three storylines—the appearance of Miranda's mom on The $20,000 Pyramid, Miranda's best friend Sal suddenly not talking with Miranda, and the appearance of a laughing man." - The construction is not parallel. The middle item should be something like "the sudden refusal of Miranda's best friend, Sal, to talk to her".
  • "Stead wanted to impart how she viewed time travel to the past is not an action of changing the past, but rather fulfilling it." - Grammar. Maybe "Stead depicted travel to the past as a way to make it be true rather than change it."
  • "Critics gave positive reviews praising the realistic setting and the incorporation of small details to form an important plot." - Do they say specifically that the plot is important? Perhaps: "Critics generally praised the book, its realistic setting and the author's deft handling of small details."

Concept and development

  • The quote box should be moved up five or six lines to keep it from overlapping a section boundary and displacing an edit button.

Plot summary

  • "Miranda reminisces about a conversation with Marcus about how no one would recognize one if one traveled back in time 50 years later." - Too many "one"s? Suggestion: "Miranda reminisces about a conversation with Marcus about how no one would recognize a time-traveler from a different age." Or something like that.

Genres

  • Both Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly found that in spite of the science fiction genre, the setting is still "firmly rooted in reality". - Suggestion: "Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly found that despite the book's science-fiction devices, the setting was still "firmly rooted in reality".

Themes

  • The many short subsections give the article a choppy look in this section. I think it would be better with no subheads.

Friendship

  • "Julie Long from Reading Time noted how the incident forces Miranda to find new friends and become more active in school where she learns the dynamics of school." - To avoid repeating "friendship", maybe: "Julie Long from Reading Time noted that the incident forces Miranda to find new friends, become more active in school, and to learn its dynamics."

Independence

  • "Stead finds that kids today are much less independent since her childhood." - Words like "today", "now", and "current" may quickly change meaning as time passes. It's often better to use a specific date or date range. Something like "Stead finds that kids in the early 21st century are much less independent than in her childhood."

Independence

  • "Throughout the novel, Miranda and her friends often walk around town without any adults even working in a sandwich store at lunch and walking home from school trying to avoid the laughing man." - Logic? They kids weren't walking when they were working in a sandwich store. Maybe: "In the novel, Miranda and her friends often walk around town without any adults, and some of them work without adult supervision at a sandwich store." Or something like that.

Time travel

  • "Helt found that time travel forms a central theme... " - Helt should be identified more fully here on first use.

Audiobook adaptation

  • The audiobook is four discs long and Holloway's performance was praised by M.V.P from Horn Book Magazine, feeling that her tone "emphasized the novel's interpersonal aspects. - Are the two halves of this sentence logically connected? Is M.V.P.'s praise related to the number of discs? If not, the disparate thoughts belong in separate sentences.
  • "The reviewer found it better that the chapter titles were added, since they add more detail into the book, but can be easily skipped over when reading the novel." - Unclear. Is "added" the right word? Does "book" mean "audiobook"? Does the reviewer attach great importance to the titles, or is this a minor part of the review?

Critical reception

  • "Reception of When You Reach Me was positive with reviewers praising the details and characters." - "With" doesn't make a good conjunction. Suggestion: "Reviewers generally praised the book's details and its development of characters."

2010 Newbery Award

  • "However, a worker at Random House had tweeted the this 17 minutes prior the official announcement." - Doesn't make sense as written.
  • After realizing the mistake, the tweet has taken down for the official announcement by the ALA at 8:38 saying "#alayma Newbery 2010: “When You Reach Me” by Rebecca Stead". - Doesn't make sense as written. Probably "has" should be "was", but beyond that, what does "#alayma" mean? Also, is this bit of trivia worth mentioning in the article?
  • Chairwoman of the Newbery committee Katie O’Dell felt that "Every scene, every nuance, every word is vital both to character development and the progression of the mystery that really is going to engage readers and satisfy them" and was "very excited about this book because it is exceptionally conceived, finely crafted and highly original". - This doesn't make sense as written because the second independent clause has no subject. Who was very excited? Maybe two sentences would work better than one.

Awards and nominations

  • The newspaper and magazine names should appear in italics.

References

  • The date formatting in the citations should be consistent. Citation 8, for example, uses two different formats. Since the article is U.S.-centric, July 15, 2009, is the correct format. All the others should conform to this pattern: month-day-year.
  • The New Yorker needs italics in citation 16.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 21:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review, I'll start on your suggestions soon. Derild4921Review Me! 22:17, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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