When Erin Entrada Kelly was awarded the 2025 Newbery Medal for The First State of Being, it completed a time-travel triad of Newbery books that began with Madeleine L’Engle. In 1964, L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time received the Newbery Medal. Her book inspired Rebecca Stead’s 2010 Newbery-winning novel When You Reach Me, which consequently inspired The First State of Being. This is Kelly’s second Newbery Medal; she also received the award in 2018 for Hello Universe. We invited Stead and Kelly to discuss their books, inspiration, and—of course—time travel.

Rebecca Stead: Erin, since you just won a Newbery Medal, I should be able to ask the first question—is it different the second time around?

Erin Entrada Kelly: Yes and no. It’s surreal because I still haven’t gotten over 2018. But I’m in a different place professionally, so my head isn’t spinning quite as much. After you won the Newbery for When You Reach Me, I know you did a ton of interviews. One of them really resonated with me. You talked about all these unanswerable questions you had when you were young—all these “what ifs.” I was the exact same way. I would stay up at night and think, What if I have a best friend out there and we’re never going to meet? I would get so upset thinking about stuff like that.

Stead: Yes! I was obsessed with all those questions. And I also think about the flip side. One of my closest friends just had a birthday dinner and I told her, “It scares me to think of a world where we never met and just walk by each other on the street.” So, there’s the fear of missing out, but also the knowledge of how lucky we are to have the people that we have. With When You Reach Me, I wanted to capture that big feeling. As writers, we’re often trying to connect readers with feelings, right?

Kelly: Definitely. I often tell my students to ask themselves how they want readers to feel when they exit one chapter and enter another. That’s what I try to do—connect readers with a feeling and a question. With The First State of Being, the question was: how do we live in the present moment when so much is out of our control? Bad things are going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it. How do we exist in that space?

Stead: That’s why I love that refrain you have in the book: “take every breath.” I found it comforting. When I think of the word “inspiration,” that’s the kind of inspiration I’m talking about—when you feel something. When I read A Wrinkle in Time as a kid, for example, I closed that book, full of feeling. That’s what inspiration is to me.

How do you feel about the word “inspiration”? What do you say when people ask you about it?

Kelly: That’s one of the hardest questions, because sometimes the answer is “I don’t know.” For me, it starts with a character and a question. When I’ve tried to approach stories any other way, it doesn’t work. I love time travel, obviously, and I’ve always wanted to write a time-travel book. But when I sat down and tried to force myself to come up with a plot, it didn’t work. I need the character first. When Michael came to me, I finally had my time-travel book.

Stead: I wonder if you think about time travel in the same way I do. I think of it as “do-over” vs. “baked in.” “Do-over” is like Back to the Future, where you change things in the past, then everything’s different in the future. “Baked-in” is when your characters are already living with the consequences of any future time travel. In both of our books, the time travel is baked in. Is this something you decided automatically?

Kelly: Yes. I’m fascinated by little decisions that have big consequences. In the book, they take a trip to the mall, for example, and that one mundane decision has huge consequences that have already connected them to the present moment. I think about stuff like that all the time. Like, if I hadn’t done this, then this wouldn’t have happened, and something else would have happened instead.

Stead: Yes! I think about that a lot, too. If you choose one path, you’re un-choosing an infinite number of other paths.

Kelly: I have to say, I’m very happy with the paths I’ve taken, because I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. And before we go, I have to tell you how happy it makes me when people compare my books to yours or say, “This is perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead.” I’ve read all your books and I love them so much.

Stead: I feel the same way. I love your books, and I think we aim for the same kind of storytelling: real feelings, imperfect characters, and surprising plots.

Kelly: It brings me great joy when people see that The First State of Being is dedicated to “the laughing man” and they know right away it’s a character from When You Reach Me.

Stead: That brings me great joy, too. It’s a gift, really—and an honor.

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly. Greenwillow, $19.99 2024 ISBN 978-0-06333-731-2

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Random/Lamb, $15.99 2009 ISBN 978-0-385-73742-5