The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, for Timeslip Tuesday

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly (March, 2024, Greenwillow Books) is a delightful and heartwarming middle grade time travel book that I enjoyed lots.

In August, 1999 (which will seem very strange and far away to the target audience), 12-year-old Michael prepares for the potential disaster that is Y2K.  When we first meet him, he's shop lifting a can of peaches to add to his survival stash kept under his bed--his mom is working three jobs and can't give him the money he'd like to spend getting properly prepared.  Though money his tight, his mother insists on paying 15-year-old Gibby to keep an eye on him, and though Michael feels confident he'd manage find without her, he still enjoys her company, both because he has a crush on her and because his anxiety and social awkwardness has made it hard for him to have friends. His only other friend is the old maintenance man for the apartment complex.

But then into the mediocre life of Fox Run Apartments, in Red Knot, Delaware, comes a teenaged boy, Ridge, strangely dressed and disoriented.  He's a time traveler from the future, and when Michael learns this, he's desperate to know what happens with Y2K.  But Ridge isn't telling.  He's in enough trouble already, as we learn from glimpses of what's happening in the future.  He wasn't supposed to be the first time traveler ever, and he's not going to risk spoiling the future by letting on all he knows.  He just wants to experience life in 1999, especially seeing what a mall is like....

There aren't any dramatic happenings in Ridge's time in 1999, although there are many complexities that Gibby and Michael must deal with.  And although Ridge doesn't tell all he knows, the time Michael spends with him gives him confidence not just about the future but about the present.  And it all ends in a beautiful, time travel wonderful way!

I enjoyed it very much.  The time travel has just the right amount of sci fi to it to make it if not plausible at least acceptable, and the repercussions of Ridge's trip to 1999 are lovely. It will bring that long lost time vividly to life for young readers, and the interpersonal dynamics and tension will keep the pages turning for them very nicely indeed.  I even grew a bit at one particularly poignant point in the best possible way.