The Rushton Inheritance, by Elisabeth Mace, for Timeslip Tuesday

Back with another vintage one for Timeslip Tuesday--The Rushton Inheritance (1978), by Elisabeth Mace.  It's a nice seasonal read set in a rural pub in the cold and snowy north of 19th century England.

Tom's time at school is running out; soon he'll be old enough to work alongside his father in the family pub.  He feels (with good reason) trapped, and dreams of running off to London to do something (he's not sure what exactly....).  Escaping the needy baby of the family who he gets stuck with more than he thinks is right and his youngest sister, who's a bit of a brat, would be an added bonus.  In the meantime, his grandmother makes use of his excellent penmanship to record her treasury of wisdom, mostly rather disgusting treatments for various conditions that bring Tom no joy to contemplate.  

But then a mysterious boy, Steve, appears seemingly out of nowhere, who turns out to be a visitor from the 20th century, coming and going to Tom's time unpredictably.  His family has found suggestive evidence that there was something of value at Tom's home back in the 19th century.  And so a treasure hunt ensues, gradually involving more and more people, including the local bullies and Tom's excentric great-aunt, who lives in a hovel of her own choosing instead of with the family.

It's a fine read, with Tom's world and family coming into sharper and sharper focus as it progresses, which was nicely done.  And Steve's time traveling was also good--it takes a while for it to be clear both to the characters and the reader what is happening.  It also serves not just to provide plot, but to provide to Tom greater perspective on his own life.

Sadly the ending was a bit of a let down, and it ended up not being quite a book I loved, though I did enjoy it.

The Future Took Us, by David Severn, for Timeslip Tuesday

I'm back with another vintage time travel book for this Tuesday--The Future Took Us, by David Severn (1958, Puffin Books).  Two mid-20th century schoolboys (Peter, the protagonist, and Dick) are saved from being caned by their headmaster by being suddenly and inexplicably plunged out of his study and into the countryside. It is a not quite right countryside, which disturbingly includes an impossibly high (by mid 20th century standards) metal tower, partially ruined.... Its inhabitants, living Medieval subsistence farming sort of lives, with no technology (not even the wheel), speak an almost intelligible English, and are friendly enough.  And the two boys realize after picking up on various clues, including a ruined girder from the tower embedded in an ancient oak tree, that they have travelled in time and are in the future.

Dick, who embodies the spirit of the British empire, immediately wants to bring technology to their lives, but his first effort at steam power goes badly, and his attempt to introduce the wheel is met with horror. There is good reason for the horror.

The medieval-esque peasants aren't the only class of people around; there is also a ruling priestly class, who practice mathematics to excess and hoard technology to themselves.  They are clearly Bad.  For instance, as well as looking Bad--they have bald shaven heads and glower nastily, they are the only ones who get to use the wheel, and they do, as a means of killing people who dissent or disobey their fanatical rule.  They have used their own rather marvelous technology to bring people from the past to add to their store of knowledge.  Attempt #1 brought them a Neanderthal, which wasn't useful, Attempt #2 was a winner, resulting in a 22nd century engineer (who wants to get back to his family), and Attempt #3 another dude-the two boys.  But even though the boys aren't any use to them, they aren't going waste time sending them back.

There is also a Resistance of people fed up with being killed on wheels, featuring a remarkable girl who can do everything physical (archery, riding, hunting etc.) better than the boys (Dick is very taken with her), and her brother, described over and over again as "the crippled boy" which grated more than a little.   Adventures and perils ensue as the boys and their allies break into the Mathematicians citadel, bring down their regime, and get home.... except for Dick, who chooses to stay with the Atalanta of the resistance (one gets the sense that he can't leave until he is better at archery, riding, hunting, etc. than she is....)

This is a book best read by 1950s children who haven't read all the better books still to come.  The plot, though fine, is not quite well developed and nuanced enough to make this a great book, and the story is slowed by lots and lots and lots of description (so much description it was hard to actually picture anything due to my mind's eye glazing over...).  There isn't much to speak of in the way of characterization, or finely drawn emotional peaks and valleys.  I doubt I will ever want to reread it.

However, this is an interesting one for us serious readers of juvenile time travel.  E. Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet is the first time travel book in juvenile fiction written in English to take children into the future, but that was just one episode of many.  The Future Took Us seems to be the earliest book published in English that makes this sort of time travel the plot of the whole book.* This particular twist on time travel hasn't gotten much attention since (in my time travel book list, there are only ten that involve travelling to what is the future from the main character's point of view).   Bits are reminiscent of H.G. Wells, and Severn adds very little in the way of wild original imagination.  The time travel ends up reading more like a portal fantasy to an alternate England than travel to a future one, and I wonder if Severn had just read the Narnia books when the idea for this story came to him.

This is the fourth book by David Severn I've read.  Several did get published here in the US, but don't seem to have caught on.  Though this one was disappointing, I will still be looking out for his other books, especially Dream Gold, which Kirkus rather liked and which is still, according to Worldcat, on the shelves of the Colorado City, TX public library (one of his books even got a Kirkus star). I can see why he didn't make it into the cannon of great mid 20th century English books that are still in print, but the two books of his I've read that aren't The Future Took Us and Drumbeats (another time travel story I didn't care for) come quite close to being ones I really liked a lot. 

*feel free to point out ones I missed!

Sylvia Doe and the 100-Year Flood, by Robert Beatty, for Timeslip Tuesday

As is often the case, to write about a book for Timeslip Tuesday is to spoil it right of the bat. But knowing Sylvia Doe and the 100-Year Flood, by Robert Beatty, involves time travel doesn't spoil the readers enjoyment of the book, and it's pretty clear early on that there's weirdness of a temporal sort going on....

Thirteen year old Sylvia was found alone in a storm as a very young child, and was taken in by Highground, a temporary home and school for children in difficult circumstances.   She watched as the other children went home or found new foster homes, but Highground was always home for her.  When she herself was fostered out, she always ran away back to it, where the horses she loved some much were waiting for her.  And this is how we meet her, stowing away in the back of a truck in a storm.  She had tried to stay at her latest placement, but with a hurricane hitting North Carolina hard, she couldn't stand not being back at Highground to make sure the horses were safe....

When she arrives in darkness and wind and torrential rain, her worst fears are realized.  The barn is empty.  And so she sets out to bring them to safety through the flooding.  The horses are not all she rescues; out in the storm she saves a boy about her own age, Jorna, from drowning.  He's adamant that she not tell anyone she's seen him, as he is in trouble with the law back home upstream from Highground.  When she hears his story, she is determined to help him.

This is not all that is strange about the flooding river--glowing with strange blue light, it's carrying along creatures that have no business at all in 21st century North Carolina.  

Figuring out what's happening, helping to care for the horses, and keeping Jorna hidden, safe, and fed, all the while worrying about her future (Highground has taken her in again, but the authorities are displeased) is a lot.  To help Jorna get home again safely is even more....the river that brought him to Sylvia is indeed extraordinary, and to unravel its secrets means dangerous adventuring through the still flooded landscape.

In the end, all the pieces fall into place, and Sylvia finds her very own family who had been grieving for her ever since she herself had been swept away by floodwaters.

So since this is a Timeslip Tuesday post, I must say that Jorna is from the 19th century, and the river is bringing extinct fauna from a wide variety of ancient and more recent periods.   The author had to walk a difficult line between making Jorna not immediately recognizable as a 19th century kid, while still leaving clues, and he did this pretty well (except that I would expect more differences of language then was the case here...).   And although the time travel river has to be taken as a given, it did have a certain logic to it.  So it was just fine time travel wise, except that this wasn't a book that was centered on exploring the repercussions and experience of time slipping.  The time travel was a mechanism for a story that was ultimately one of finding home.

It also works well as an exciting disaster/adventure story, and there is also a lovely thread of Sylvia's interest in nature (the book includes illustrations form her notebook).  In short, there is much that should please the intended audience.

(The one thing that did not please me was one of Sylvia's horse decisions--her favorite horse collapses exhausted after the first evening of swimming through the flood, but the next day Sylvia makes it canter while carrying both her and Jorna.  There's lots of additional horses being pushed too hard as well, although these weren't anyone's fault....Probably as a 10 year old I would have loved the horsey bits best, but as a grownup I liked the bits that focused on what was happening at the home/school better....)

(It was hard reading this while an actual hurricane was causing devastation to the very same part of North Carolina.  The flood in the book was meant to be terrible, but it didn't come close to real life.)

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Queen of Ocean Parkway, by Sarvenaz Tash, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Queen of Ocean Parkway, by Sarvenaz Tash (September 3, 2024 by Knopf Books for Young Readers), is a really nice book in the best possible sense of the word; I would have loved it as a ten-year-old and very much enjoyed it as a grownup.  

Roya's mom is the superintendent of a 100-year-old apartment building in Brookly, the titular Queen of Ocean Parkway.  Roya is always busy helping out her mom, while practicing to become an investigative journalist by putting out a podcast about the residents (more mystery of the clogged drain in 3B sort of thing than gossip).  And as such, she keeps her ears open for interesting tidbits.  This habit leads into a complicated mystery when she hears two new tenants, a couple, Katya and Stephanie, discussing whether or not Katya will disappear like other women in her family have had a habit of doing, never to return.  Katya does in fact disappear, and Roya is determined to find out what has happened.

With the help of another newcomer to the Queen, a boy named Amin with an eidetic memory (so helpful to mystery solving), she dives into the history of Katya's family, one that is tied to a fortune telling machine on Coney Island.  It turns out that the machine is the family's time travel device, taking one woman in each generation back in time every 25 years or so, and never returning them.  But Katya's determined to break the pattern, and bring Katya back, even if it means travelling back in time herself, along with Amin.

The trips back in time take the two kids to the point where each woman in Katya's family makes their trip.  But how to get Katya back to her own time instead of leaving her to age 25 years before the point where she is supposed to be with Stephanie? Roya's Baba, who she doesn't live with (her parents being divorced) proves to be a great help with the theoretical side of time travel (and Roya is beyond happy to find this point of connection, as Baba is undergoing cancer treatment and quite possibly dying, so her visits to him were strained before they could talk about this new subject of mutual interest).  But Roya gets a little sidetracked when it occurs to her that 25 years ago she might be able to leave a message for her father telling him to seek out help sooner when he first gets sick....

And so the reader gets what is both a fascinating time travel mystery, full of the desperate need to fix the past and save loved ones so they can have a future with their families.

It's a story full of lots of lovely details (for instance, about the mundanity of old apartment life, how each different time period 25 years apart is different yet similar), lots of great characters, and fascinating time shenanigans (rooted in science, which we learn about through Baba's academic side of things, that I appreciated lots).  It's also a lovely letter to an imaginary old New York hotel, and makes me want to visit Coney Island, where I've never been.  And it's a great read--it left me thinking that if the Newbery Committee that honored The Westing Game with its win back in 1978 were to be reconvened for this year, they might well pick this one.

 

Zoe Rising

 If you've read and enjoyed Stonewards, by Pam Conrad, you might, like me, be excited to learn there's a sequel, Zoe Rising.  You might also be slightly disappointed--Zoe Louise, the child central to the time travel of the first book, is not present in this one, and we don't learn anything new about her or her story.  Instead, we reconnect with Zoe at summer camp, the first time she's ever been away from home.

When the news breaks that one of the other camper's parents have been killed in a car accident, Zoe becomes consumed by the fear that her grandparents are also somehow at risk.  And this worry sends her travelling back in time...to visit with her own mother when she was a little girl.   Zoe's mother was pretty bad at being a good and present mother, leaving Zoe with her grandparents and only visiting occasionally, seemingly a shell of a person.  

But in the visits Zoe pays to her mother's childhood, she is witness to the horribly traumatic event that change the happy child into the emotionally absent woman, and she strives mightily to alter the course of events.  And is successful, to a point, saving her from what we imagine was the utter horror the little girl of the past might have otherwise endured.

The time travelling makes it hard for Zoe to be a good camper, and everyone is relieved when it's time to go home....and home, for the first time in Zoe's life, now includes her mother...

It's satisfying time travel, and a fine story in general, but somehow it doesn't quite hit the emotional high points that would make any more powerful.  So although I enjoyed it just fine, I probably will never feel the need to re-read it.

The House in the Square, by Joan G. Robinson

 

Joan G. Robinson was the author of When Marnie Was There, a rather well-known mid 20th-century timeslip book, so I was pleased to acquire another book of hers, The House in the Square (1972), which was apparently also time-slip.  Turns out it's very time-slip light....

Jessie is packed off to London to stay with her mother's old headmistress, who is planning to turn her large house into a small school.  She is looking forward lots to the company she'll have, but to her dismay there are no other girls in residence....and as the days pass, with no lessons and no other boarders, her spirits fall.  Finally she's enrolled in the local school, but gets off to a bad start socially, and so she remains lonely and isolated. 

 In the public garden across the way, where she often goes to visit the lovely statue of a girl, she hears the voices of children playing, and ganging up on one child called Melly, but never sees them.  Also in the garden is an old woman in raggedy clothes, who doesn't seem to have all her wits and who rummages through the rubbish bin, who she gets to know to some extent. 

(any moment now, I thought, lonely Jessie will time travel and meet the children....)

Rooms are let in the old house, an actress comes to stay, and she charms Jessie, but her sparkly gold turns out to be dross when she leaves with the ex-headmistresses squirreled away bit of money.  Naturally, because this is that sort of book, Jessie is suspected.  

She finds the part of the garden where the children's voices were coming from has been built on, and never hears them again.

Mercifully by the end of the book things get better for Jessie, but the time slipping never progresses past voices of unseen children. The old woman turns out to have been the girl Melly, which did not surprise me.

A disappointment, although possibly if you aren't expecting time travel and have more tolerance for well-written and vividly described gloom you will enjoy it more than me.  It felt like realistic fiction with a bit of fantasy tacked on for no apparent reason.  The illustrations by Shirley Hughes are of course nice.

The Secret Library, by Kekla Magoon, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

The Secret Library, by Kekla Magoon, has been out since May, and having enjoyed other books by the author, and liking libraries, I meant to read it....and then about a month ago I realized it was a time travel book, so there was no more waiting and here it is as this week's Timeslip Tuesday book.

Dally is a child of great wealth and privilege, but her life is horrible circumscribed.  Her grandpa, who brought adventure and fun into her life, has died, her (black) father died when she was very young, and her (white) mother is inflexibly focused on training Dally to someday assume control of the family business.  Being only 11, she would rather not have business tutoring most evenings after school, but that is her life.  There is no reasoning with her mother.

(me--her mother really is something else.  She's so awfully unaffectionate and single-minded and business focused that she's unbelievable, and this disminished my enjoyment of the book.)

Then Dally gets hold of an envelope her grandpa left with her, not to be opened until she's 21.  Of course she opens it, and it leads her to a Secret Library.

(me--I was taken aback to find that this is not a hidden sort of secret library, but literally a library of people's secrets, that can be checked out and visited in a time travel way.  I like hidden libraries more than I like libraries that make secrets available; I'd hate to have one of my own kids visiting my secrets...)

 So Dally begins to find secrets that call to her, learning secrets from her parents' life before her father died by actually travelling through time to watch things happen. 

(me-- it was nice that Dally had this magical chance to see her father and mother when they were young and in love (very sweet), and to see her grandfather again).

However, there are intimation that it is not all fun and harmless visits to the past.  The librarian tells her that many of the patrons are "needed for something," (p 121), and the proves to be the case for Dally. She also lets slip that sometimes patrons don't make it back....And Dally learns that the library has chosen her to be its next caretaker, which means never going out again through its doors when she assumes this responsibility.  

(me--which is a heck of a lot for a kid to have to contemplate.  Being trapped, even by a really neat library of time-travelling magic, is not what one necessarily wants from life....)

The next secret Dally takes from the shelf sends her back to a pirate ship almost 200 years in the past.  There she befriends the white captain, Eli, and the black first mate, Pete, and Jack, a boy of her own age.  And the secret revealed her is the location of the treasure that was the basis for her family's fortune. 

(me--I was surprised by how long we spent on the pirate ship with not much happening....but it was important that Dally grow to know and care about Eli, Pete and Jack.  And now I'm going into spoiler territory, so you can stop now if you haven't read it).

She meets these people again on her next visit, and this time it becomes clear what she is needed for.  Eli is a woman, and she is pregnant with Pete's child.  Pete has escaped slavery, but is still in danger, and Dally, who is also clearly black, is in danger too.   Dally and Jack (who turns out to be another time traveler, from 1960) are able to help Eli and Pete escape...

Then on her next trip through time, she meets their grandchildren, two grownup brothers, just as one of them breaks the news to the other that he's going to leave the family and pass as white.  Dally puts all the pieces together and realizes that these people she's met in the past are her own family.  And she realizes as well that she doesn't have to go back to her own time...

(me-very big spoiler coming up)

So she doesn't.  She stays with Jack in his own time in the 1960s growing up alongside him, and shows up at the library again, just after she left for the past that one last time, an older woman, ready to take on her role as its librarian. 

(me--and we are asked not to feel bad for her mother, because Dally explains everything, and her mother gets to watch her grow up by time travelling to the past to see it for herself,  Which I didn't find very satisfying from a maternal point of view).

So basically, the time travelling in the story is the mechanism through which we, the readers, see alongside Dally the past of her family, with all its darkness and love mixed together.  And though I certainly found it very readable and very interesting, I also found it frustrating.  Dally is so busy being used to show all this to the reader that she ends up not being all that much of a character in her own right.  

But that being said, I do think that Dally's adventures have great appeal for the target audience!

A Twist in Time, by Jean Ure, for Timeslip Tuesday

A highlight of going to the biennial conference about 20th Century School Girls and Their Books, as I did a few weeks ago, is that there is time set aside for attendees to sell books to each other (I guess giving a talk on 20th century UK time travel books was cool too, but not quite as much fun).  I had jammed packed my bag and the lining of jacket with American books (picked up cheap at library booksales) that I thought I could sell, and I did--taking in money from sales with one hand, and giving it to the woman at the table next to me with the other (nice that her table had more books I wanted than any other one!)

What with this and vigorous visiting of charity shops, I came home with this lovely assortment of books--

--which included today's Timeslip offering, A Twist in Time, by Jean Ure (2000). Several of her books got published in the US as well as in the UK, though not this one, so you may have heard of her....

It's a pleasant, but not remarkable, story.  Cosmia (aka Cosy) has to stay with foster parents while her mother is in hospital (mental health issues).  She finds the two girls fostered there already hard to mesh with--they are louder and brasher than she is, and mock her for her posher accent and for attending a posher school. But she has her own room, and her own table for homework....and sometimes she sees another girl there, writing...a girl who was living through the London Blitz, and who can also see her across time (and who wishes very badly she could help Cosy with her maths homework....Her journal stays on the table for a while after this girl leaves the room, and Cosy learns her name (Kathleen), and the sad circumstance that brought her to this house (parents killed in Blitz).

Everything works out nicely, with Cosy getting a bit of gumption from the other girls, and unexpected support from the older of the two as well.  And her mother gets out of hospital and she meets Kathleen, now quite a bit older, in real life.....

I enjoyed the time slippy part of the story lots. We get to see Kathleen's point of view from her journal, and it was interesting and intriguing to see how each girl thought the other was a ghost, and how they wondered what was happening.

But I only gave it three stars over on Goodreads because in the end this proved to be somewhat pallid time slipping, with no direct communication across the years, which disappointed me. (The closest it came was when Kathleen was able to leave a helpful math note in her journal that was of great assistance to Cosy).  But it was a nice book, very engrossing and easy to read.

(And it was given additional personal interest to me in that my younger son's current girlfriend is also named Cosima, which was the first I'd heard of the name, so it was neat to see it here...and probably, since she is a fine arts major, she isn't great at math either, though I could be doing her an injustice...)

A Storm Without Rain, by Jan Adkins, for Timeslip Tuesday

Life is becoming marginally less crazy, and so I'm back with a Timeslip Tuesday post after my break--A Storm Without Rain, by Jan Adkins (1983).

15 year-old Jack is fed up with his family in a typical teenaged way and skips out on his grandfather's birthday to go out in his boat on Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.  Napping on a small island, he's caught up in a strange storm without rain, and it transports him back in time to 1904.  Alarmingly, the island where he'd chosen to spend his day out is a leper colony back in the past, and the one boat that passes by refused to take him off it.  So he sets out on a long swim, and comes ashore safely to find temporary work with on a fishing boat.  And that journey brings him back to his own home town, which he both recognizes and find (naturally) strange. 

 He goes to his own house, where his boat-building family take him in, and becomes close friends with the boy who will be his grandfather.  He learns the craft of boat building from his great-grandfather, and has a crush on the girl who's his grandmother.  The threat of being denounced as a leper when the man who found him on the pestilential island provides some tension, as does the constant low thrum of anxiety about getting back to his own time.  

But as time travel goes, it is rather pleasant.  All that is ugly in the past is brushed aside by the wings of the countless sea birds and the teeming fish in the ocean and the curl of wood beneath his chisel as boats are made.  And his family in the past are really lovely and interesting characters.  The surprise introduction of Mark Twain added a spark of interest towards the end, but really nothing much happens.

Sometimes I chaffed at the loving descriptions and lack of critical thinking about the past, but sometimes I really appreciated the cast of characters and the lovely word pictures....but my most powerful takeaway was that I should sharpen my own tools.  The book is basically a love song to Buzzards Bay, and to a lesser extent the art of boat building, so if you are in the mood for a slow moving, dream-like journey to the past (with lots of boats), you will find it pleasing (though it's rather melancholy that the Bay is so much less full of birds and fish than it was, which I feel safe in saying is one of the author's Points).  

Drumbeats! by David Severn, for Timeslip Tuesday

 I was not drawn to the cover of Drumbeats! by David Severn (1953), which promises a wildly exaggerated colonialist encounter with "African" culture experienced through the medium of an entitled British boy.  This is not what I look for in a book (and also I don't like title with exclamation marks.  Wow me with story, I say.  Not with punctuation).  But since I have set myself to reading every time travel book published in English for children in the 20th century (with exception of long series for younger children), I bought an affordable copy when one came my way).  And the book delivered on the promise of its cover!

Four English boarding school kids, 2 girls (one of whom is the narrator) and 2 boys, come across an African Drum in the school's "museum."  When Oliver, the musician of the bunch, starts playing it, the kids find themselves observers of an English expedition in central Africa.  One of the Englishman has just stolen the drum. 

Oliver plays it again.  The kids see another episode in the explorers' journey.  Edith, our first person narrator, finds it disturbing.  She finds it more and more disturbing as the events seen during the drum's windows to the past are echoed in the boarding school present.  Oliver drums on.  It culminates with disaster striking both expedition and school.  

Through this, the kids argue about what's happening--is the drum a window to the past or a fantasy, is it causing the connections between past and present, or predicting them?  These arguments are not interesting.

Edith is also not interesting.  She has no rich inner life.  Possibly the author thought it would make her humorously relatable to constantly put herself down "I am an ordinary person"  "I was ashamed of myself" "I keep making mistakes."  If so, the author was wrong.  It just made me not to spend time with her dull pov self.

Some episodes are mildly entertaining, when Edith is describing external events and not sharing the oatmeal-like working of her thoughts.  There were not enough of these episodes.

The actual timeslip via drumming was fine (again, this was in large part due to Edith describing and not thinking...).  Yes it was stereotypes of Africa presented by a 1950s Englishman, but it wasn't as so grotesquely awful as to be unreadable.  What was happening to the expedition was not uninteresting. And the kids at least recognized that stealing the drum was a wrong thing to have done.

short answer--I will not be re-reading it.  But since I did enjoy another book by the author, I will not give up on him if I find his books going cheaply.  

The Grave, by James Heneghan, for Timeslip Tueday

 That was the longest break I ever took from blogging!  But the desperate times of moving out of work are pretty much over, and so here I am again, ready with a time travel book for this Tuesday!

The Grave, by James Heneghan (2000), cannot be described as a comfort read (although it has a happy ending).  It starts in 1974 in Liverpool with its 13 year old protagonist, Tom, climbing down into a mass grave of Irish famine victims.  The stacks and stacks of rotting coffins are being cleared away to make way for new construction in a very hush hush way, and Tom was curious about what was happening.  Surrounded by the dead, Tom travels back in time to Ireland during the famine, arriving in an isolated community just in time to save a boy from drowning.

The boy's family extends to Tom all the hospitality they can, though they have little food to share.  The Monaghans do, though, have love for each other, and this is something that's been in short supply in Tom's life.  Abandoned as a baby, he's spent his life bouncing between foster parents.  His current ones are awful, abusive, and spitefully mean.  

He returns to his own time, but is drawn back to the Monaghans, briefly living episodes of their life (being evicted from their home, the starving journey to find passage to Liverpool, the sickness and despair they find in the city once they reach it).  But though he keeps returning to his own life, he spends enough time with this family that they become his family as well.  Two of them even survive (like I said, not a comfort read).

And back in the present, Tom finds himself more protective of the special needs boy he's fostered with, until Brian too is family.  Even more miraculously, because he travelled in time, he's able to find his birth parents, and so there is a happy ending that would not have been possible if he hadn't suffered alongside the Monaghans.....

Can't say I enjoyed it, but I think it is a good book--the writing is very vivid, the character growth satisfying, and there is enough relationship between past and present to make the story hang together well.  It is grim, but not as depressing as you might expect; Tom's first person point of view is lively and sharp, and entertaining except for in the darkest moments. I may well have enjoyed it more if graves dug up for construction projects weren't something I have to think about for work.

(this might be the worst cover of all the 400 or so time travel books I've reviewed.  Who thought his hair sticking up in that weird way added anything of value????)

Cat's Magic, by Margaret Greaves, for Timeslip Tuesday

I'm working my way, as finances allow, through all the time travel books of the twentieth century, and although Cat's Magic, by Margaret Greaves (1980), is free on open library, I like reading physical copies much better.  And this is a book I'm happy to have added to my collection, even though it isn't one that I loved deeply.

Louise is an orphan, and the money set aside by her mother to keep her at boarding school has run out.  Now she must go stay with an aunt in the middle of the English countryside, in a somewhat dilapidated farm house.  I would like this, but Louise does not, and she is keenly aware that Aunt Hester is not thrilled about it either.  Aunt Hester expects Louise to pull her weight, but Louise has no desire to pull anything, and no desire to read the works of Sir Walter Scott as Aunt Hester suggests, but prefers the escapist fluff for girls she has to keep hidden in her room lest Aunt Hester throws it away.

But all is not terrible.  A friendly village boy, Charlie, teaches her how to ride a bicycle, which Aunt Hester has dragged out of one of the barns, and although we don't get a lot of fun rural expeditions (which I rather like), it was a bright spot in her life.  More importantly, though, she rescues a kitten slated to be drowned.  And miraculously Aunt Hester lets her keep little Casca.

Even more miraculously, the ancient Egyptian cat goddess, Bast, appears in her room that night to reward her for her cat kindness.  She offers Louise a boon, and Louise impulsively says that she'd just rather be anywhere else.  So she gets the gift of being able to travel anywhere she wants.  Bast is good at place, but being an immortal goddess is more than a bit loose with regards to time.  When Louise asks to be sent to Egypt, she ends up in ancient times, where Casca, who's travelled with her, gets a good chunk of worshiping and Louise has a slightly hungry, but interesting, visit to the past.

At this point I was thinking it was just going to be episodic time travel, but I was pleased that this was not the case.  Her next jaunt takes her to a Victorian seaside town, where she befriends another orphan, who serves as an unpaid drudge at her (much more unpleasant) aunt's boarding house.  It is a miserable situation, and Louise decides to rescue her from the villainous aunt, and takes her back to the present.  

There is more back and for between this past and the present before everyone gets happily settled, and it was rather good reading.  Aunt Hester and Louise gradually warm to each other, which was nice.  And though the author doesn't give deep consideration to culture shock and bureaucratic challenges, there's plenty of detail and cozy found-family-ness.  So though it didn't hit hard emotionally (mostly because it stayed on the surface level of things), I enjoyed it.  (Casca the cat played a very small role, so don't expect much kitten cuteness if you do pick this up.  But if miserable Victorian orphans are your jam, there's pleanty of that).

A Chance Child, by Jill Paton Walsh, for Timeslip Tuesday

It's possible I picked up A Chance Child, by Jill Paton Walsh (1978), as a child, but if so I'm sure I would have put it down after just a few pages, which are both confusing for the reader and miserable for the main character.  But grown-up me read on, and though there was plenty of misery to come, it lessened somewhat, and the confusion gave signs of clearing....

It begins in a hellish, massive dump, in which a lost, starved, unwanted child called Creep wanders not knowing what he is doing.  It is unclear if it is past or present, and unclear who Creep is.  The wasteland abuts a canal, and Creep finds refuge in an old canal boat, which starts him on a journey.

Then the point of view shifts to Christopher, a boy who is desperately hunting for Creep, his half-brother.  Christopher is definitely in the present of the book (which of course is in the distant past for modern kids), and gives the reader more information--turns out, this is Creep's first time outside ever; part of the house has collapsed, opening the cupboard where he has been confined all his life.  Christopher looked after Creep as much as he could, risking his mother's anger, and cares about what danger he might be in, enough so that he's on the verge of breaking all his mother's brainwashing and going to the authorities.  

Then Creep, in the narrowboat, flows down the canal, on a journey into the child labor horrors of the Industrial Revolution.  As a grown-up I recognized that this was now the past, but it wasn't spelled out to the child reader and I bet I wouldn't have known at this point that Creep was time travelling (I was, for instance, a great re-reader of Joan Aiken and would have probably taken it all in my stride without question).  Creep acquires two great comrades in his journey, a girl and a boy who he helps escape from the dangerous misery of their labors (the boy has been pickaxed in his bottom, and the girl fell face down into a fire).  The girl can write a little, and carves "Creep" into a bridge stone to show him.

This carving Christopher, after more than a day and night of searching, sees, and realizes that it was done long long ago.  He has a realization that Creep has gone where he can't be found (I hope child reader me would have picked up on the time travel at this point, but you never know).

Creep and his two friends have a relatively nice bit of work at a pottery (they aren't in mortal peril, though it is grueling work) and are able to make the canal boat homelike, but this interlude is shattered (literally, by broken pottery).  Tom, the boy, goes off on his on to be a miner, and Creep and the girl find (horrible, dangerous) work in a mill.  

All this time, only children have ever been able to see Creep, and he's never felt any need to eat or drink, and he's never laughed.  When he does finally do so, he's solid and real back in the past...and on his way to a (mercifully) happy ending.  And Christopher back in the present, still desperate to find his poor brother, starts doing historical research, and finds that Creep himself wrote the story of his life (confirming, in case child me still needed it, that time travel, quite possibly in the form of a canal boat with something of a mind of its own, had taken Creep away).

It was a bit too much "let's go on a journey through child labor horrors (burns, beatings, torture) while simultaneously being confronted with a tortured child in the present for my personal taste, which much preferred "canal boat home making," "found family," and "library research."  And there was lots and lots of description, a lot of it about unpleasant things, that either brought everything vividly (too much so?) to life, or slowed the story down, depending.

Still, once I was into it and not much confused, I found it fast reading, and became invested in what was happening.  And it does have a happy ending in which found family in the past becomes real family, and Creep and Christopher's mother is being investigated by the authorities who have found Creep's birth certificate....

The Things We Miss, by Leah Stecher, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday, The Things We MissThe Things We Miss, by Leah Stecher (middle grade, Bloomsbury, May 2024), gives a self-conscious girl a chance to coast through all the unpleasant-ness of seventh grade through the magic of time-slipping.  When J.P. finds a magical door in her old treehouse hideout, she goes through....and three miserable days of worried that her large body is being judged and that she's just wrong somehow pass while she is cocooned in peaceful-ness. 

She's exited to share her discovery with her best friend Kevin, who didn't even notice she was gone (her body went on doing its thing while she rested), and at first he's very intrigued....but the magic doesn't work on him.  And as J.P. starts skipping three days here and there more and more often, relying on him to catch her up (her body double doesn't pass on memories), he is less and less supportive, and urges her to skip less often.

And indeed, life is going on during J.P.'s missing days...good things, meaningful things, and not just horrible gym class.  Her friendship with Kevin is strained to a breaking point, because of how often she just isn't there for him.  Her grandfather is dying of cancer, and she's skipping through that too.  And when she realizes just what she has slept through, she knows she has to start facing life with no escape hatch, and try to mend all the lost spaces in her life as best she can.

It was hard for me to care all that much about J.P. at first, as she is very self-centered, and has trouble thinking outside her immediate concerns, mainly her poor body-image, but further into her story, her grandfather's decline.   But her situation is a very relatable one--escapism is often appealing.  And it's good to see her get some sense, and set out on the road to being a stronger, more present person.

It's a really interesting time-slip premise too--her body double fills in for her so well, and is in fact herself though she can't remember it.  It's basically time-slipping as periodic amnesia.  The treehouse door is never explained, although it makes sense in the story that it appeared for her because of her intense desire to have a respite from the negative rain inside her head.  

And in many respects, this is one that a fair number of middle school kids will really see themselves in, and quite possible learn from J.P.'s experiences that the things in life that have meaning make up for the miserable bits, and that being there for those you care about, even if it also comes with mean girl bullying and grief, is worth it.

A Pattern of Roses, by K.M. Peyton, for Timeslip Tuesday

If you, like me, are a Gen X American, you may well have watched in your youth a British tv show called Flambards, about a girl and her horses, WW I, two brothers and her romances with them, etc.  Perhaps you even went looking for the books by K.M. Peyton on which it was based.  And then possibly you were led to other K.M Peyton books...because even libraries in the US had them on their shelves. I think of Peyton as a 1970s/80s author, because that's when I was reading her, but she was publishing into the 20th century, and only died last December.  The RI library system has several of the more recent ones, and of the older ones kept Flambards (1968).  Much of my own vintage K.M. Peyton collection is mine because in a marvelous stroke of luck we moved into our house in 1999 just as the library three houses down was weeding their children's books for the first time in decades...but one K.M. Peyton book it's taken me a while to get ahold of is Pattern of Roses (1972), which I have only now read. And I can easily imagine re-reading it every three years or so....

Tim's wealthy parents have been spending lots of money on his education to make him into a successful adult--good boarding school, where he is prepared for Oxford like a goose being fattened, to be followed by joining his father in the advertising business.  But Tim derails things by getting sick, with what sound like mono, and having to take a break from school in the new house in the country his mother thought she wanted.  The remains of an old house were mostly demolished to make way for the new one, and Tim claims the one little surviving bit as his own room, which his mother doesn't understand (the first of many such no understandings in the story...).  For the first time in years, there is no pressure on Tim, and so when a builder working on the old chimney in Tim's room finds a box full of old drawings hidden away, Tim has the chance to reflect on them at leisure.

Impossibly, inexplicably, the artist, a boy called Tom, starts to become real to Tim.  He knows things about him he couldn't know.   And he wants to know more about Tom, and the girl, Netty, he drew.  He finds Tom's gravestone in the churchyard, showing that Tom died when he was just about Tim's own age back in 1910, and there he meets the vicar's daughter, Rebecca (also dealing with heavy parental expectations), who becomes his companion in both looking for Tom and Netty, and in figuring out what he wants to do with his life.  

The story in the present is interposed with Tom's story in the past (trading school when still a kid for the hard life of a farm laborer, though still finding time to draw). It's not a time travel book, because there's no travelling, but there is time slipping in the connection between the two boys, which is lovely and magical, and a nice counter note to the sadness of Tom's story in the past (wealthy, self-centerdly oblivious Netty is a piece of work, and there is tragedy) and Tim's struggles in the present.  Peyton's descriptions are utterly beautifully vivid, adding to the magic of the story.  And it's great to see how Tim comes into his own.  

Though it is set around 1970, the narrative of teenaged emotional growth is as germane today as it was then.  It would have been a young adult book back then, with its bit of romance and the rebellion against parents (and it's very 1970 YA cover art), but I think the most appreciative audience, then and now, would have been dreamy, imaginative 12-14 year olds.

Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop, by Joshua S. Levy, for Timeslip Tuesday

Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop, by Joshua S. Levy (May 14, 2024, middle grade, Katherine Tegen Books) is a groundhog day type timeslip story that's tremendously fun (which I expected, having found the authors previous books to also be very entertaining).  And yet it's not all fun and games; there's a more thoughtful thread running through it as well.

Ezra's Bar Mitzvah is an ordeal to be endured, what with family tensions, his little sister barfing on his shoes, and the painful struggle to get through all that is required of him.  He's just glad he's reached the end on Sunday afternoon and it's over...when he finds himself back on Friday, having to do it all over again.  And again, unable to figure out how to end the madness.  

When he finds there's another boy in the same venue also caught in an endless Bar Mitzvah loop, he's relieved to have someone to join forces with. Finn has lots of ideas on things they can try to change things enough to make it out.  But efforts to make things perfect don't work, asking for help from Rabbi Neumann doesn't work (although these conversations are thought provoking and I enjoyed them), and they are running out of ideas (but not out of time.  They have lots of that.)

Then they notice that they are sharing the hotel with a convention of physicists, who surely must be able to help figure out how to break a time loop.  And indeed, Dr. London is interested, once they've convinced her (by knowing things they couldn't know, learned in previous iterations) that they are telling the truth.  It's tricky for Dr. London, because she has to keeping starting over and over every Friday, but the boys become skilled at helping her remember.  (I really liked that the scientist who cracks the case is a woman, who's not eccentric or weird but just a good scientist).

To save her notes, she needs gold to build a science cage to keep her data safe from vanishing every Sunday, and with lots of repeated practice, Finn and Ezra carry out a bank heist, and things seem hopeful.  But as they loop, not only are they getting to know each other really well, envious of things each has in his life that the other doesn't, they learn more about the people around them, most importantly, their families.  And what they learn makes them uncertain that they are ready for time to start moving forward again....

 The two boys are clearly defined characters, not just in the externals (Ezra lives in an Orthodox household crowded by siblings, making do but with no safety margin, and Finn is an only child of comfortably off parents, for whom religion is somewhat tangential) but in their personalities--Finn is a mad whirl of idea, and Ezra is a more thoughtful observer).  This difference keeps each time loop feeling fresh for the reader, and Finn's wild ideas keep things fresh(ish) for the kids too, although they had to put in a lot of practice weekends for more complex undertakings, like the bank robbery....

There's a lot of entertainment to be had in the looping, with many days seen in detail, and others, that don't progress the story, tidily recapped.  Some loops have poignant realizations, some have humor and excitement, and it's all good reading, although considerable suspension of disbelief is (not surprisingly) required (I had no trouble suspending mine). The kids have the freedom to waste their time, to savor moments while knowing they aren't going to be lost, to experiment with how what they do affects others. And so when time starts running normally again, they are prepared to live each day as if it will never come back again...which of course it won't.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Ship in the Garden, by Zetta Elliott, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Ship in the Garden, by Zetta Elliott (middle grade, 2023, independently published, 104 pages), this week's Timeslip Tuesday book, is many things in one--a fantasy story with magical beings, a story of 13 year old Scottish kids with non-magical worries, a story about the slave trade in Scotland, and a time travel story that sends one of the kids back in time into enslavement on a Caribbean island.

It starts with a school field trip to Pollok House, build by an 18th-century Glasgow merchants whose fortune was based on slavery.  The day is marred for Kofi when he's paired with Gavin, a racist tough who is determined to make him miserable.  Kofi is also a new kid, followed by rumors about what he did to get suspended from his previous school, and he's also a kid living with the sadness of his beloved Ghanaian grandmother's sickness.  

So things are already a lot for Kofi when the tour of Pollok House is full of weirdness with no logical explanation, including a shadowy doppelganger and sounds no one else hears (this part is great haunted house reading!).  Then he explores outside and finds a book Gavin nicked from the house's library, smeared with blood, lying on the ground near the replica of an 18th-century merchant ship. And then Gavin doesn't show when it's time to get back on the bus to school.

Kofi shares his worry that something's happened to Gavin with a Kaylee, a black classmate who seems like a possible friend. But Kaylee, who Gavin has also targeted because she is trans, refuses to care.  So Kofi goes back to the garden alone....and meets an urisk, a strange and lonely Scottish magical creature.  The urisk is trying to bring back his one friend, a Caribbean boy who was the enslaved page boy of the 18th century family.  Gavin was the offering he used to try to make this happen....

And though I could go on and on synopsizing, because there's a lot of story in this relatively slim book, suffice it to say that Gave has travelled back in time into enslavement in the Caribbean, and Kofi is determined to bring him back (partly because he doesn't want the other enslaved people to have to deal with a racist young Nazi bully in their midst, but a bit also because he is horrified by the wrongness of the whole thing).

But to save Gavin, Kofi must resist the urisk's schemes and deflections, and he must be brave enough to face the great Water Mother herself and make a sacrifice that tears at his heart.....all for a racist bully, who, it turns out, is furious about being saved....

Although most of the story is Kofi's first person point of view in the present, we also get glimpses of Gavin's life in the past.  It is tragic and grim, but it does give Gavin the chance to feel connection such as he lacked in the present.  It's not a redemption arc in which Gavin is magically en-nicened, but an explanatory arc with hope for change.  As for Kaylee, she's such a strong and vibrant character that when she's on the page we don't need to be in her head.   

Like I said, there's a lot of story here, and it kept me reading past my bedtime with much interest and enjoyment. Older middle grade fantasy readers will probably do the same, and they'll get some learning of Scottish and Carribean history in the process, and have thoughts provoked about the present as well. There's weight here of past and present sadness, but the fantastical elements, likeable main character, and the vivid pictures created by the fine writing relieve enough of the pressure to make it a (thought-provoking) pleasure for the reader (me).  I wish, though, (and this might be a matter of personal taste) that it had been less brisk and gripping, with more moments of inflection and reflection, smoothing the transitions, and giving space for the powerful moments to reverberate more clearly. 

For more about Zetta Elliott and how she came to write this particular book, here's a talk she gave over at her website--“‘I AM MYRTILLA’S DAUGHTER’: WEAVING SCOTLAND, SLAVERY, AND SITHS INTO HISTORICAL FANTASIES”  (well worth reading!)

Throwback, by Maurene Goo, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's time travel book, Throwback, by Maurene Goo (YA, April 2023, Zando Young Readers), sends Samantha, the daughter of Korean immigrants, back in time to the 1990s, where she has to play the role of an ordinary high school kid until she figures out what she needs to change back in the past in order to get home again.

Sam is kicking hard against her mother's expectations and aspirations.  We first met her when she's deliberately being obnoxious during her parents' country club membership interview (and yes, I share Sam's views about country clubs and their grass maintenance issues, but still it was hard to like her at first).  She and her mother, Priscilla, are clashing at every turn, and it comes to a head when Priscilla's mom, Sam's beloved Halomi, is hospitalized and in a coma.  No, Sam doesn't want to be taken shopping for a Homecoming dress the next day.  And tells her mother she hates her (and yes, I see where Sam is coming from, and there are failures of communication on both sides, but it strengthened my feelings about Sam being self-centered).

In any event, she has to find a ride back to school....and the driver who comes to pick her up ends up taking her back to the past.  

So there's Sam, in the 1990s, in her mom's high school.  Her mom is in the running for homecoming queen, and Sam knows she didn't win, and that somehow this situation soured the relationship between her and Halomi.  Maybe this is what she needs to change...so she makes herself Priscilla's campaign manager.

The culture shock is real--Sam has never been more conscious of being Korean and is appalled by the racism her mom had/has to deal with daily.  There's also the casual misogyny, lack of environmental awareness, and lack of technology.  But sticking to Priscilla like glue, she finds her understanding of her mother deepening, finds her grandmother wasn't nearly as wonderful as a mother, and finds that they are actually becoming real friends.  And on top of this, she finds herself falling by another new kid, a boy who seems almost as out of place as she is....

I never did quite warm to Sam, who I found too pushy and thoughtless, but I did very much appreciate the way she becomes more aware of what her mother is really like as a person, and more understanding of the circumstances that made her who she became.  This is really well done.  And I found the romance sub-plot fun as well (and was glad to see Sam doing some critical thinking about her boyfriend back in the present; there were many red flags that she was ignoring).  What was the most fun though were the trials and tribulations of being a modern girl back in the 1990s, and the target audience should get a kick out of this as well. 

In short, an engrossing read with enough thought-provoking-ness to keep it from being just fluffy fun, and more than enough fun to make it more than an emotionally heavy mother-daughter relationship story.

Time travel wise--Sam lucked out here.  She finds a place to stay with a kind woman who she knows in her own time as an assisted living resident with dementia, and this woman not only gives her food and shelter but also money.  The mechanics of the time travel were satisfactory, and the changes made in the past did have ripples, but the biggest change was in Sam's greater understanding of her mother, her grandmother, and her (now ex) boyfriend.

The Color of Sound, by Emily Barth Isler, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is The Color of Sound, by Emily Barth Isler (March 2024, Carolrhoda), is a really absorbing book about Rosie, a girl whose mother is determined not to let her tremendous musical talent be neglected in any way whatsoever. When this pressure breaks Rosie's one friendship, she decides to go on strike and stop playing, so she can make space to find out who she is outside of music.  And so instead of spending her summer focusing on her violin as she has every summer for years, she's off with her mother to the family home in the countryside of Connecticut, where her grandmother is dying of Alzheimer's.

Rosie doesn't know her grandparents well at all, because the violin has always taken precedence in her life, and she doesn't know what to do with herself at her grandparents.  Music still fills her mind, coupled with synesthesia, leaving her disquieted.  But then she finds an old shed being used as a retreat for a girl her own age, Shoshanna, and it seems like they might become friends....Quickly Rosie realizes that this girl isn't an ordinary neighbor--she is her mother, back when she was a kid in 1994.  And Rosie wonders how this lively girl, longing for music herself, became the controlled and controlling woman dedicated to always making sure that the violin comes first.

In the weeks that follows, Rosie manages to make friends with ordinary kids, an older group doing an improv class at the library, she becomes comfortable for the first time with the resident large dog, and she gets to know her grandfather. She learns from him about the history of her Jewish family, and how they escaped the Holocaust, though leaving many of the family behind.  This history leads her back to music, through the song her grandmother remembers her own mother playing....a song she longs to hear again.  It leads her to think more about being Jewish, too, something that wasn't part of her violin focused life.  

And she wonders if somehow she can connect with her mother back in 1994, pushing her toward a present where Rosie's musical genius isn't the whole of their relationship.

I loved all the elements of the family, the memories, Rosie's introspection, and the music that fills the book (even though Rosie only plays three times), and of course the time slipping, though never explained, and never a real driver of the story, was a nice bonus.  But I expected there to be some dramatic reveal about why Rosie's mother ended up the way she did, and there wasn't. It's not at all clear why she is the way she is and not believable that she changes so much at the end of the story (even though this is what Rosie was trying to do with hints and nudges back in the past).  

That being said, it was pretty much a single sitting read for me and I might well re-read it in a few years.

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.