2025 Newbery winner, The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly is the story of Michael, an anxiety-prone boy on the cusp of middle school. It takes place six months before Y2K. Other characters include Gibby, his high-school-age baby sitter, neighbor, friend, and secret crush, and Ridge a boy from the future who has rashly decided to use his mothers teleportation device prototype to travel back to his favorite year: 1999. The three young people spend a little less than a week together: will that wreck the space time continuum, will Ridge be able to get back to the future, and will Michael find out whether his concern (and stolen-goods stash) for Y2K is reasonable? It will prove to be the most important week of their young lives.
Loved: Ending–I don’t want to give spoilers. But, in my opinion the best time travel books have the endings where lots of things that seemed insignificant suddenly are very important. This book had a great ending. It left me with a smile on my face as lots of little puzzle pieces fit together in a very satisfying way and everyone got just the right ending full of hope and personal growth.
Interesting: I think the most interesting idea of this book was the Sum Book. Ridge travels with a Sum book which is a summary of all that happened from the 1980s to 2020. Michael, who is obsessed with Y2K and in general has a lot of anxiety about the future, wants to get his hands on these sum books. This is a great way to explore Michael’s (and our own as the readers’) desire to know the future. But what makes this even more of a great plot device is that we as the readers have that sum book. We know about what happens before 2020. (Although perhaps children in the future will have less of an idea of exactly what happened!). So we are able to see the sum book from the perspective of both characters. We don’t know all that Ridge knows hundreds of the years in the future, but we know what Michael wants to know right now about Y2K. We also know that simply being told that Michael does not, in fact, need to be stealing canned goods for a Y2K stash will not actually solve his underlying problem.
There is a lot about this book that feels very much a product of its time, which is slightly ironic since it’s about the future and 1999. Its title is all about being in the moment you are in. In The First State of Being Ridge explains, “That’s what my mom calls the present moment. It’s the first state of existence. It’s right now, this moment…That’s why I’m not going to think about the mess I left behind. That’s the third state–the future. I’ll worry about it when I get there” (118). A big plot point is that Ridge has no immunity to the common cold, something that after COVID, we accept as plausible and serious. It’s also climate fiction (a term I learned from this article) with a subplot line about the animals that are gone in the future. When that element of the story became apparent, I worried it might be really overwhelming (especially for an anxiety prone protagonist) but Erin Entrada Kelly handled it well, and both Michael and the reader are exposed to the truth without it becoming too heavy.
Limitations: There is what I’d consider “older kid” content with references to swear words (not actually saying them, but referring to specific ones instead) and references to Ridge’s non-binary siblings. As an adult, this barely registers as something to think about. But, as I am now a parent of a 9 year old whose reading ability and vocabulary allow him to read any of the Newberies, I also sense that while he could technically read many of the coming of age novels, this and others really feel a few years beyond where he is and what he is interested in as a reader. Overall, this feels like a book for middle schoolers to me, which is probably appropriate since it’s the summer before the protagonist starts middle school.
Other Newberies:
The other Newbery that has a time traveler from the future as a plotline is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2010), itself an homage to another time traveling Newbery: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Englne (1963). The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (2022) is set also in the future.
There is also a similar feel to Hello, Universe also by Erin Entrada Kelly (2018) with a diverse cast of characters and a protagonist who feels very lonely and a plot with a solid ending. Other roughly contemporary (as opposed to historical) male protagonist coming of age novels that this reminds me of are …And Now Miguel and Onion John by Joseph Krumgold (1954 – 1960), It’s Like This, Cat Emily Neville (1964), Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary (1984), Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (1991), Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1992), Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos (2012), Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo (2014) and New Kid by Jerry Craft (2020).
What it teaches me as a writer.
One of the things that impressed me about this book was the compelling portrayal of Michael’s anxiety that was not overly taxing for the reader to experience. Readers want to understand a character with anxiety, and they want to feel not alone in their own experience of anxiety. However, most of us don’t want to actually experience all that anxiety when we are reading for pleasure. So it takes a deft hand to allow us to see the anxious actions and just enough of the repetitive and catastrophizing thoughts to understand the motivation of those actions. I thought the most powerful image of Michael’s anxiety was his desire to see Ridge’s Sum book. I think that combination–showing a lot of external actions, telling just enough inner dialogue, with a powerful and unique symbol– probably could be used well in various writing contexts.
Have you read First State of Being? What are your favorite time travel stories?