Kelly, Erin Entrada. First State of Being, The. Greenwillow, 03/2024. 272pp. Fiction. Trade $19.99. 978-0-0633-3731-2. GRADES 5–8. HIGH ADDITIONAL.
This tightly written novel opens on August 17, 1999, the twelfth birthday of anxiety-prone Michael Rosario, who is shoplifting canned goods to prepare for the Y2K disaster. Simultaneously, on August 17, 2199, Ridge, the sixteen-year-old son of a Spatial Teleportation Scientist, impulsively grabs his mother’s untested time travel device, and jumps 200 years back, landing in Michael’s apartment complex in Delaware. Michael desperately wants Ridge’s Summary Book to know what happens when the year turns 2000, but Ridge—like Gibby, Mr. Mosley, and Michael’s mother—encourages him to focus on being in the present. Michael describes himself as half Filipino, and Mr. Mosley, the maintenance man and mentor, has a “brown weathered face.” They all seem to live a bit above the poverty level. Authentic relationships and time-travel tension will absorb readers despite the lack of descriptions of the future. Teachers and parents will appreciate that both the risk and ultimate benefit of staying in the present moment may linger in readers’ minds.
Erica Siskind—Oakland Public Library