Goodbye Stranger, My Friend, Goodbye

Parents say

Valuable friends weather rocky circumstances together: They sometimes get angry and argue, but they apologize, forgive, and move on. Plenty of upstanders, including students cheering on a classmate struggling through an audition, and helping a student get a well-deserved turn in the spotlight. When an inappropriate photo gets circulated, a student brings it to the attention of adults and is thanked by the classmate whom some blame for spreading the image. Girl is bullied with verbal taunts and mean notes; student who alerted school officials to inappropriate photo is targeted by peers.

Young teen developing curves attracts attention. Teens text each other suggestive photos, which are widely circulated and lead to harassment, ostracism, and body shaming.

Young teen dresses as a Playboy bunny for Halloween. Passing references to several brands, particularly foods, such as Twinkie, Kit Kat, Frappuccino, Volkswagen, and Matchbox. Parents need to know that Goodbye Stranger is a compassionate, timely novel about the strange betwixt-and-between years of middle school. Newbery Medal-winning author Rebecca Stead When You Reach Me centers the drama on an intimate picture that gets shared with an unintended audience and touches on privacy, sexism, friendship, identity, faith, betrayal, and love in its many surprising forms.

The central characters are solid, well-grounded tweens and teens who make mistakes but learn from them, with plenty of guidance from friends and family. Mean kids strongly influence events but remain at the edges of the storytelling.

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Add your rating See all 2 parent reviews. Add your rating See all 6 kid reviews. Best friends Bridge, Tabitha, and Emily once swore upon a Twinkie that they'd never fight -- but seventh grade is testing that vow. Em's maturing figure is drawing attention, particularly from a cute older boy sending flirty text messages. As they try to figure out whether their friendship can survive middle school, Sherm is trying to make sense of his new connection with Bridge. He's bitter following his grandparents' separation after 50 years of marriage. Finally, an unidentified girl takes a mental health day off from school to ponder friendship and betrayal.

Out of the everyday dramas of middle school -- flirting, pettiness, new ideas, dangerous friends -- Rebecca Stead weaves a tender meditation on love and the ways it can both strengthen and weaken us. Stead, a Newbery Medal winner for When You Reach Me , is finely attuned to the thrills and heartaches that mark the middle school years, and readers of any age will recognize themselves in her sensitively told story.

Timely plot hooks -- from dealing with "frenemies" to navigating social media -- give tweens plenty to ponder but never seem forced or preachy. Families can talk about privacy and social media. Have you heard of any situations of private material getting circulated at your school? This is a good opportunity to revisit your family's guidelines for using cell phones and social media. What do you think of the way the characters handle the cyberbullying incidents?

Do you think you would make the same choices? Why, or why not?

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners. See how we rate. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization, earns a small affiliate fee from Amazon or iTunes when you use our links to make a purchase. Thank you for your support.

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Our ratings are based on child development best practices. We display the minimum age for which content is developmentally appropriate. The star rating reflects overall quality and learning potential. Learn how we rate. For Your Family Log in Sign me up. Is it OK for kids to read books outside their reading levels? Column 4 Our impact report: How Tech Is Changing Childhood. Want personalized picks that fit your family?

Set preferences to see our top age-appropriate picks for your kids. Bittersweet, lovely story of friendship and social media.

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Rebecca Stead Friendship Sign in or join to save for later. Based on 2 reviews. Based on 6 reviews. Get it now Searching for streaming and purchasing options It won't be the first time your website has filled a need in my work and in my life! Nancy, I'm so glad this book came along when you needed it though it is not out yet! It is one of those books I know I will reread time and again and be startled by what I didn't pick up the first few reads. What a gift it is. Bridget exits the hospital transformed inside and out; no longer feeling like a Bridget, she asks to be called Bridge.

And indeed, twelve-year old Bridge serves as a bridge to her friends and family over the course of the six months in which Goodbye Stranger is set. This book is simply beautiful. As you move through the text, you, too, will feel your heart pulled in two directions or more, and you will marvel at the layers of life to be uncovered and explored. Teaching Ideas and Invitations. This is a story about friendship — friendship between husbands and wives, grandparents and grandchildren, brothers and sisters, male and female classmates, and even strangers.



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At the core of the novel is the friendship between Bridge, Em, and Tabitha. On the margins is the friendship between Celeste and Gina. And yet, the friendships continue. What does Stead illuminate, through her characters, about the strength and power of female friendships? How does this contrast with the images of preteen and teen girls that the media gives us?

Break students up into small groups to explore the nature of female friendship in commercials, television shows both fictional and reality tv — another form of fiction and movies. To what extent is competition between girls disproportionately represented? How does this novel offer us something different that may actually be closer to the lived experiences of girls and women? One group may also want to interview older women in different decades of their lives, to find out if they are still friends with the girls they were friends with in middle school, what they recall about those relationships, and how those relationships continue to play a part in their lives.

Public Shaming and Redemption. Em, an athletic seventh grader, begins to trade suggestive photos with 8 th grader Patrick via text message. Bridge and Tabitha remain loyal friends despite their misgivings about and disapproval of her actions. To what extent is this possible in your school community? To what extent can students change their reputations once something has gone viral? To what extent is bad publicity still publicity?

This could simply be a subject of class discussion, or an idea that students pursue more deeply through journal writing over the course of the year. How do your students define love? What do your students think about the epilogue? After discussing their responses, have students write another epilogue that takes place two years after the first epilogue.

Goodbye Stranger

Have each student focus on one of the characters in the novel. Limit each epilogue to a one to two-page vignette. Have students in small book groups that cover a range of novels that include the multiple perspectives of characters. Some of these novels may have alternating first person narratives; others may, like Goodbye Stranger , have alternating perspectives that also vary from first to second to third person narration.

Novels to consider are: Have students then try their hand at writing an original short story from two perspectives. Comparing Communication in the 20 th and 21 st Centuries. In Goodbye Stranger , characters of all ages are communicating, as people do now, via text message: Sherm and his grandfather, Bridge and her friends, Em and Patrick, Celeste and her parents.

Several key plot points revolve around the use of technology: How do your middle grade students use texting, emails, and social media sites as forums for communication? How does their use of such technology change depending on the audience parents, siblings, friends, grandparents?

Goodbye Stranger - Ukuletea // Old Original Song

Have students discuss this in class, and then prepare interview questions to use with their parents, guardians, grandparents, or neighbors about the role of technology in their own middle grade years. In small groups, have students compare and contrast their findings.