The First State of Being

If you were alive in the last half of 1999 and are now old enough to have memories of it, you'll recall that it was for many people a time of immense anxiety. Y2K was supposed to kick in as computers were unable to process the numerical transition to 2000. Everything that relied on computers would instantly stop working. Planes, for instance, would fall out of the skies. The result would be like a Biblical magnitude apocalypse, only wrought by faulty technology rather than an angry God.
That's the mindset that Michael, one of the protagonists of Erin Entrada Kelly's The First State of Being. He lives with his single mother who has to juggle three jobs to make rent and buy food. She'd formerly been able to manage on the income from one job until he was fired which was somehow his fault. When we meet him on his 12th birthday he's shoplifting canned peaches (which his mother loves) to add to the stash of purloined supplies under his bed for in case the predicted dystopia happens.
When Michael is talking to (Mr.) Mosley, a maintenance worker in the apartment complex Michael lives in and family friend, a very strange looking teen approaches them. Ridge is dressed quite oddly. And he wants to know what year is is. Michael's anxious mind jumps to worst case scenarios: "Sociopathic teenager burns down apartment complex. Sociopathic teenager attacks innocent twelve-year-old shoplifter. Sociopathic teenager kidnaps beautiful sixteen-year-old babysitter who smells like strawberries and loves mystery novels." (Who Michael has a huge crush on).
The truth is even stranger than Michael's wildest imaginings. Ridge has transported himself from 200 years in the future by technology that is still in the experimental phase. Now Michael and Gibby, the babysitter, must shelter Ridge, keep their families and strangers (when he insists on a trip to the mall) from seeing that there is something really odd about him, and, in scenes reminiscent of the movie ET, figure out how to get him back to his own time when his technologies seem to be bombing.
Kelly manages to insert some existential questions into an engaging narrative pitch perfect for her target audience. I'd also recommend it for two generation book clubs.
On a purrrsonal note, Back then I thought Y2K was so much bullshit. My sister and her fellow fundamentalists spoiled Armageddon fears for me. Believing the earth to be totally evil, they looked forward to the Rapture. On a regular basis they'd do these countdowns which annoyingly involved trying to convert any family sinners (yours truly) to repent while there was still time. Waking up the next day still here with the sinners didn't trigger any cognitive dissonance whatsoever. They'd gotten the date wrong.
A great big shout goes out to Erin Entrada Kelly, juvenile author who certainly deserves her Newbery Awards.
Jules Hathaway