The Magic Library of Waterfall Way, by Julie Abe

 

Having very much enjoyed Julie Abe's middle grade fantasies Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch, and Alliana, Girl of Dragons, it was with great happiness that I curled up with her newest, The Magic Library of Waterfall Way (August 25, 2026, Bloomsbury Children's Books).  And it was lovely high stakes cozy fantasy, with a delightful heroine.

First, our main character, Lyra.  Lyra's parents are dead, and if she cannot find a guild who will take her in, she will be banished beyond the terrible mists, which everyone assumes is a fate worse than death.  But Lyra is the first Unremarkable born in centuries, and in a world where everyone has some sort of small or large magical affinity, she is a pariah, a bringer of ill-fortune.  Not even the Guild of Pinecone Collectors will risk taking her in.  But by chance she stumbles across a Guild that seems perfect for her, with her love of books and learning--the secretive Guild of Scholars. And the woman at its head gives her a chance to prover herself worthy by completing a quest.

Second, the cozy part--Waterfall Way, the village of this guild, is delightful, and Lyra is thrilled to have a home (hopefully permanent) in a house enchanted to be helpful (if it's in a good mood).  There's even another girl who might become her first friend.  And she just met a cat-like magical creature who's attached itself to her.  

Third, the high stakes--not only does Lyra face banishment, but the quest she acquires is beyond challenging.  She must restore the ruined library, that none of the scholars have been able to do.  Even then they enter the first section, they are spat out again, remembering nothing.  It is full of terrible dangers; for instance, it's infested with book burning dragons. If she fails, so does the Guild of Scholars, the books are lost (and the increasingly controlling government isn't printing new stories), her furry friend will never be reunited with its kin, and she is banished.  

It's a truly engrossing story, with twists I did not see coming (although I was of course certain that Lyra would win through).   I read it for the first time on vacation this past spring, and it was perfect for that, and again this month, and it also perfectly distracted me from the many tasks at hand.  Kirkus calls it "A richly imaginative love letter to libraries, found family, and a child’s curiosity" and though I'm not sure about the "child's curiosity" (my take was a "unloved child desperate to solve mysteries in order to survive, which is not quite the same") I agree wholeheartedly with the first two points.

Highly recommended for daydreamy older elementary and middle grade kids!

(Disclaimer--review copy received from the publisher)

Adventure in the City of Stories, by Emma Otheguy, for Timeslip Tuesday

Happy book birthday to Adventure in the City of Stories, by Emma Otheguy, illustrated by Polly Bernatene (middle grade, July 21, 2026 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers) which happily for me is published on a Timeslip Tuesday! Once again, the three cousins (Siggy, Camila, and Jorge, from Cousins in the Time of Magic) are plunged into a time travel adventure. This time around, they must go back to New York City in the early 1930s.

The story begins when Camila, the bookworm of the family, is desperately upset when her principal sends her home with the Spanish language books she brought to school to share with her new friend Marisol, but writes a letter to the whole school community that such books are inappropriate in a US school. But in a cupboard in their Tia Xia's house there an old book in Spanish by Pura Belpré (a name which doesn't mean much to the kids yet, but will to many adult readers!) along with two strange puppets that belonged to her, and the cousins decide to lend the book to Marisol. This does not go well.

The book and the puppets were found by Tia Xia seemingly abandoned in a closet in the Latin History Museum where she works, and she brought them home. But now their absence has been noticed, and a criminal investigation has been launched. The kids decide to take them back to their original time and place, 1930's New York City, traveling in one of Tia Xia's magical time boats. But Cooper, the white bully next door, makes off with one of the puppets as they begin the journey.

The three cousins find themselves in the past, with 1 puppet and an old book, and not much in the way of a plan. The NY public library seems like a good place to start, and off they go with a new friend, Puerto Rican Antonia. Unfortunately, their conversation with librarian Anne Carrol Moore (another name that will thrill librarians) is overheard by rich and nasty Mrs. Wilson, who hates the recent influx of Puerto Ricans into the city. Antonia knows this well, as her mother works for her. And Mrs. Wilson currently is furious at Antonia, for submitting an essay to Mr. Wilson's competition for young writers that celebrates Puerto Rico at the expense of New York. So Mrs. Wilson immediately decides the kids are thieves and takes the book from them.

What follows is a tense scramble to foil evil Mrs. Wilson, with the added worry of repercussions landing on Antonia's family. It's great to see the foiling work, and great as well to see the modern kids appreciating the slice of New York social, and literary, history they've fallen into. Message sometimes overshadows story, but not enough to matter in the long run, especially since the thought-provoking celebration of stories refusing to be trampled, and the value of diverse stories, is such a timely and lovely one! And the history lessons folded into the mix are great--fun fiction is the best way to learn about the past! In this case, the history of Puerto Rico, which will be new to many young readers.

And though the time travel wasn't the main point of the book, it was an effective vehicle for an entertaining and illuminating story.




disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Where You'll Find Us, by Jen St. Jude, for Timeslip Tuesday

This spring was crazy busy, and I'm glad to be hopefully blogging more now the dust is settling, starting with a Timeslip Tuesday post!  Where You'll Find Us, by Jen St. Jude (June 2, 2026, Bloomsbury YA) is the sort of book that makes glad to have gone with timeslip instead of time travel, because time is weird as heck, but no one actually travels through time...

It is a beautiful mix of coziness and trauma. 

The cozy is a magical house in its own pocket universe outside of time that shelters queer teens who need it.  It provides magical baked goods, the books you were wanting to read, the supplies for crafts you wanted to make, and most important, the found family of the others being sheltered who accept you for who you are.  And no time passes, and you never need to sleep or use the bathroom, and you are safe.   This is just what Cal (ex Calla) needs.  

The senior prom that was supposed to be a gorgeous milestone spent with Ramona, the girl who is the love of their life, turns into a performance of shutting down the part of them that is realizing they are not, in fact, also girl.  And if this is true, then the future that seems so clear to Ramona, of going to a woman's college together, is a nightmare. And Romana is very clear that she only likes girls (though she's not transphobic).  But without Ramona, Cal has no one--her parents, through an unfortunate use of her ipad, found the things she's been searching for, and kicked her out, and Ramona's family took her in.

So Cal and Ramona end their prom night out at the edge of campus in an implosion of love and hurt and fear, and a storm breaks around them.  They stumble through wood until the find a house in the middle of nowhere, and it lets them in, and the coziness wraps around them.

But just when the coziness of the queer utopia seems almost too much, the trauma each of the young people there carry is gradually revealed.  They come from different times in the 20th century, and none of these were great times to be queer.  Not one of them has a happy story to tell; all were truly desperate and in danger when the house appeared for them.  Leaving is always an option, and it would return them to the moment they came to the house. Cal welcomes this chance outside of time to figure out who they want to be, Ramona too realizes important things about herself, and bonds are formed with the others. 

But then the bubble of timelessness bursts.  The safety of the house was double edged--there was no moving forward with life.  And each of them has to choose if they will go back, and who they will be, and what they might become, or how they will die.  

The author is kind, and wraps up everybody's story in a way that soothes the trauma side of the story without magically healing it.  Because there is no magic healing; there was the gift of peaceful time, but life ends up having to be dealt with as best as possible.   Each life story is powerful and moving (even Ramona's, which doesn't come close to the level of the others.  I am still not quite sure why the house let her in, but it's a generous house, and it was a wise choice to do so).  

Cal's journey to understanding of who he/them is nuanced, detailed, compassionate and important reading for readers who haven't made this sort of journey themselves.  The history of being queer in the 20th century is heartbreaking.  The details of it all make for good reading, especially for readers who don't need page-turning Excitements and Adventures.  It is a book full of love, and I highly recommend it.

The Delta Codex, by Deva Fagan

The Delta Codex, by Devan Fagan, is a vividly engrossing story of a brave girl who fights to save her world.  It is upper middle grade science fiction at its best (and I don't say this lightly).

The story begins in silence.  A young girl, called Delta, is one of the children chosen to hold an echo from the past, an echo that if it breaks free could threaten the city of Danak-Tol, the heart of her world.  So she lives, forbidden to speak unless absolutely necessary, with other children in the Vault of Echoes, remembering nothing from the time before she was taken.  Confident that she is vital to her city, and sustained by the friendship of an adorable flying mechanical (Flick), she questions nothing.

But then she illicitly looks outside and sees an old man devoured by a toxic blood storm.  And she begins to question....

Her questions grown, and dreams from her echo begin to invade her mind.  To find answers, she must renounce her safe and quite life, and flee into the wilderness outside the city.   But though there are indeed the deadly creatures and communities of heretics she had always been warned about, there is also, for the first time in her life as an Echo, friendship and purpose.  And there are answers that upend everything she thought she knew about her world, which those in power kill to suppress.

Thid is excellent science fiction--an excellent first step for middle grade readers into both dystopian fiction and planetary settlement.  It's also an excellent story of one girl's journey to autonomy and self-worth, in which speaking truth to power is central to the plot.   The author does an excellent job building the world, gradually extending it outward from the Vault of Echoes so that the reader learns alongside Delta.  And there is mystery to be explored, with surprising twists and turns.  There's also a lovely balance between tension and danger, and warmth and friendship. The mechanical Flick, in particular, is utterly charming.  

I read the ARC months ago, by yesterday my hard copy arrived I sat down and started reading it all over again, and I'd be finishing it today with much pleasure if I didn't have to a. go to work b. go to Holland.  

A Better World is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis

 

A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, by Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff (March 3, 2026 by First Second), is a beautifully illustrated graphic presentation of young people taking action against global warming.   It is both a call to arms, with specific examples of what young people can do, the personal stories of a group of young people from diverse backgrounds doing those things, and a clear presentation of the history and science of climate change.   

Every beat hits just right, and with the interesting information (both biographical and scientific) delivered clearly and engagingly, and coupled with very appealing illustrations, the book is a page turner on first reading (in large part because the individual stories, which offer personal global perspectives) and one to linger over in later re-reads.   And though the situation is grim, the tone is ultimately hopeful, and specifically address how to combat despair.

A perfect Earth Day book for teens, and one many adults would also do well to read!  Much as I enjoyed it (especially the biographical sections), I'll put it in my local free library because my neighborhood sure could use more climate activism. 

The Curse Breaker (Isle of Ever, book 2) by Jen Calonita, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Curse Breaker, by Jen Calonita (March 10, 2026 by Sourcebooks Young Readers), takes us back to the scenic bit of Long Island where a young girl, Everly, stands to inherit a grand estate if she can solve the mystery left behind by her 19th century ancestor, Evelyn.  The mystery centers around the Isle of Ever, which appears briefly during the "orange blood moon" and which calls to Everly, just as it did to Evelyn.

Everly assumed that finding her way to the island (as told in the first book, Isle of Ever) would be enough to satisfy the conditions Evelyn place on her inheritance, but this is not so.  There are new riddles to solve, and new dangers and complications. Not least of these is that Evelyn took a group of her friends over to Island years and years ago, to save them from the sickness that was killing them.  The catch was that they would be cut out of time until the island next appeared in our world.  And that time is now, and suddenly Everly is shepherding one of these 19th century kids, a boy named Gil, through 21st century life.

Gil adapts surprisingly well and becomes a valuable team member in the hunt for a way to save the kids from the past still on the island, foil the plans of ruthless pirates who want the immortality that the island's treasure can grant, and solve the clues that Evelyn has left behind before the clock runs out on the inhertence.

Ts a time travel book, the main interest is Gil experiencing modern life and coping with being an orphan out of time.  There's another character introduced in the first book, a 17th century man who cursed himself with immortality who desperately wants release, which adds more time travel interest.  That being said, the time travel is just one more flourish of the flourish filled story, and not the main point.

There are more twists and turns than I've mentioned; it's a fun adventure that will appeal lots to kids who enjoy mysterious hunts and foiling bad guys!  But it is also a cliffhanger, which is too bad because I would have happily kept reading....

Jeremy Visick, by David Wiseman, for Timeslip Tuesday

Time slipped from my fingers this past month, so it's been a while since last Timeslip Tuesday.  But here I am, offering one of the best time travel stories of the last few decades of the 20th century that I've ever read--Jeremy Visick, by David Wiseman (1981).

It starts with Matthew, a modern boy in Cornwall, telling his teacher that history is rubbish.  Instead of fury, the teacher decides to prove that this is untrue, and sets the class to find interest in local history.  So Matthew and his neighbor Mary end up in the local cemetery, contemplating the names of the dead.  (interjection- it is clear that though at present misguided re history, Matthew is a pleasant sort of boy, such as one enjoys reading about).  

In the graveyard, Matthew and Mary find a stone commemorating Reuban Visick and two of his sons, lost in an accident at Wheal Maid, one of the many local copper mines a century ago, with a sad bit of afterthought carving--

    And to Jeremy Visick, his son

    Aged 12 years, whose body still lies

    in Wheal Maid.

And Matthew becomes caught by Jeremy's story as past and present meet, finding himself slipping back in time to see Jeremy as he was in life, and finally, horribly, inevitably, going with him down into Wheal Maid.  The tragedy happens, killing Jeremy's father and  brothers, leaving Jeremy and Matthew to climb up and up through endless rock tunnels.  It is horrible, and sad, and Matthew tries so hard, but ultimately the two boys fall into exhausted sleep.  Matthew wakes to hear voices come to rescue them, but when he reaches for Jeremy, the 19th century boy he was with is gone.  All he can do know is see that what remains of Jeremy's body will no longer lie in the darkness of Wheal Maid all alone.  And it is so well done.

I was all set at this point to give the book five glowing stars on Goodreads, but then the author betrayed me. After working up the powerful emotional engagement between Matthew and Jeremey's tragic fate, the book throws it all into the trash by having Matthew grinning about how he knows what life was like for kids in the mines. My own tears were not yet dry, so to heck with that.

Also I did not like that Matthew is probably damaged for life by undiagnosed concussions sustained both at school (while sticking up for an underdog) and thanks to his father knocking him down in a fit of rage (Father needs anger management classes).  

On the plus side Matthew's history teacher is great, and both wandering in local cemeteries and reading books like this are great way to learn about the past.  I have just come from opening the book to check a few details, and almost read it all over again.  It is a keeper for sure.

Adam's Common, by David Wiseman, for Timeslip Tuesday

I'm back for another Timeslip Tuesday with Adam's Common, by David Wiseman (1984). 

14-year old Peggy is dragged along to England from her home in Boston when her father's work sends him to the industrial town of Trafford.  She is not thrilled by the prospect of living there for a whole year, and faces a rough adjustment at her new school.  The only place she likes is Adam's Common, a huge undeveloped park in the middle of the densely built-up town. Her explorations lead her to the remains of an old house, burnt long ago and half fallen.  She sketches it, but though she is a good artist its shape fights her, and she can't quite capture it, and the mood of the place shifts from one visit to another.  And there is also the fleeting glimpse of a boy inside the ruin....

Back in the 19th century past, there was a lonely boy, William Trafford, in the house.  A boy who can see her...a boy rich in material things, but with no friends at all.

When Peggy learns that Adam's Common is going to be turned into a modern commercial/residential development, she is appalled.  With other like-minded townsfolk, she throws herself into a campaign to save the park she has come love. (I liked that her mother gets involved and meets lots of people too, because one imagines she was even more lonely than Peggy).  But saving the park means proving that it was deeded to the town to be left as open green space in perpetuity...which leads to finding out who Adam was, and why the common was named for him.

In the present, Peggy sees William, and it is as if he is trying to reach out to her, just as she is trying to connect with him.  And when she is able to read his diary, freshly discovered by a relative, she learns about Adam--William's first and best friend who loved to learn about all the green and growing things, and all the animals in the park like grounds of William's house.  He never entered the house, and he and William met only in secret.

Then, slipping back in time, she sees what happened to Adam.

And Peggy, who loves the park just as Adam did, is able to cross more fully back to the past and meet William, now grown old, inside the house that has not yet been burned.  And this meeting, they can speak to each other, and William is able to show Peggy how she can save the common land he wanted saved for ever in honor of his lost friend.

I read this a while ago, and I did not love it.  In my Goodreads review, I wrote "It was good, and I liked how the past and the present came together to save a beautiful undeveloped piece of land in the middle of an urban area, but it needed to push harder than it did at the emotional arc. More story would have helped."  But just now, dipping into the end to refresh my memory, I found it much more moving than I remembered, and I wonder if my past self of mid January (which seems like a year ago) was just in a grumpy mood.  In any event, I will keep this one for rereading, and seek out more by the author.

The Aftermyth, by Tracy Wolff

 

Happy book birthday to The Aftermyth, by Tracy Wolff (middle grade, February 2026 Aladdin)!  Here's how my reading went: I was very happy to get a review copy, and looked forward to it lots, planning on posting about it today.  I started it one evening last week, read five pages, and thought "I will enjoy this." Two hours and 200 pages (out of 448 later, I thought "I want to keep reading because I am really enjoying this!"  Half an hour and another 50 pages read, I thought "I wish it wasn't bedtime; I want to keep reading."  But it was, and so I enjoyed finishing it the next day! From this you can gather that I found it fast, fun, and engrossing.

The Aftermyth is set in a magical Greek mythological boarding school in our real world.  Penelope and her twin brother are starting their first year there, and are confident they will be placed in Athena House, like their parents.  But Penelope gets off to a bad start when she's separated from her brother and reality goes wonky on her in unpleasant ways--the bridge she has to cross turns half way through from wood to snakes, for instance, and more mundanely the trek through the mud of a strange forest in which she finds herself lost wrecks the clean new shoes she carefully picked for her first impression ensemble (very real world middle school relatable-ness, which continues to be nicely interspersed with mythological happenings throughout the book).

And then, horror! Instead of calm, organized, life-of-the-mind Athena House, she's assigned to Aphrodite, the house of sparkles and glitter and glam.  Turns out, though, that though the Aphrodite kids might be everything her parents didn't want her to be, they have something the Athenas (including Penelope's parents and brother) lack--they are emotionally present and caring people.  And so by the end of the book she has realized that having best friends who really are there for her, who think enjoying life is reasonable, is a Very Good Thing, and she stops hoping she'll be moved over to Athena. (She also realized that the sweet snacks of Aphrodite are actually preferable to the apple slice snacks of Anthena, and even though I like a good Athena-esque library as much as anyone, the candy room she gets instead is pretty tempting...)

So that's one big arc of the story.  The other is the mystery of why strange things keep happening to Penelope; no one else, for instance, falls into the underworld when the ground beneath their feet vortexes on them, for instance.  Woven into the school part of the story are discussions of how myths are retold, and why (also really nice done, and I like this thought-provoking-ness lots!).  And this question, of who makes the stories and how and why, is central to the mystery.  

With plenty of splashy magical boarding school fun, a couple of cute guys such as a middle school kid might crush on, some exciting adventure bits, and a mythological mystery to be solved, it is very very easy for me to be certain that the target audience will like this lots.  Though mythological boarding schools inevitable make on think of Percy Jackson, I would give this to kids who haven't met him yet.  This is a much more solidly middle grade story, with less epic danger (although more may come as the series continues) and more a feel of what middle grade life is like.  

Short answer:  if the second book were already written and was in my hands, I'd be reading it instead of writing this.

Skipshock, by Caroline O'Donoghue, for Timeslip Tuesday

After a long while of time getting away from me, I'm finally grabbing it by the fetlock to offer a new Timeslip Tuesday post. Skipshock, by Caroline O'Donoghue (YA, June 3,2025, Walker Books US) isn't time travel, or even time slip, but it sure does mess with time something fierce, perhaps the fiercest I've ever seen time messed with.

It starts with Margo, an Irish girl alone on a train taking her to a new boarding school. But things get strange, and instead of taking her to Dublin it becomes a journey taking her out of our world. On board with her is Moon, a travelling salesman, who is clearly not of our world. It is lucky for Margo that he decides, despite all the arguments he can make against it, to help her. The destination that they reach is another world, one where the day is only a few hours long, where most lives are lived with hardscrabble frenetic desperation. It is linked to other worlds by trains; to the far north the day is only two hours long, but to south days get longer and lives get easier. But though Moon, as a salesman, travels through the worlds, the south can never be his home, as he is one of an almost extinguished race who once had their own passage ways apart from the southern controlled trains.

It is an awful lot for Margo to take in, even before she becomes hunted for no clear reason by thugs from the southern lands. Moon is the only thing keeping her safe...but there is little they can do except run. And when running leads them into the heart of the Northern rebellion against southern control, and the trains connecting the worlds begin to disappear, Margo begins to despair of ever getting home, and begins to question who she really is. And she begins to see Moon differently--not just the utterly strange young man whose life is so foreign to her own, but a person in his own right, with a haunting past and little hope for a future full of all the time in the world.

It is dizzying and riveting, and though the reader (me at least) is confused a lot, alongside Margo, it all starts to make sense, and while danger keeps being piled on danger, the reader's emotional connection to Margo and Moon becomes concomitantly greater, until the last third of the book wooshes by in a hurry of emotion and adventure (still mind-bending, but making more sense with every page). 

And then, after totally investing me, the ending makes it clear (with a bang) that this is the start of a duology.

So it is time travel of a non-traditional sort in the sense of having to adjust to days of horribly different lengths, which comes at both a physical and a psychological cost, but it's also interesting to one interested in time travel fiction to see a world in which time as the thing of greatest value, functioning as the basis for social injustice. If you like your speculative fiction though-provoking with a soupçon of romance and social justice themes, and don't mind a bit of mental dizziness, it should be right up your alley!

happy 100th birthday to Winnie-the-Pooh-- a personal retrospective

When Simon and Schuster sent me a copy of the 100th anniversary edition of Winnie-the-Pooh, which includes both books), last fall (which has just released, though the actual birthday is October 14), I started writing this post in my mind....

When I was 2 or 3, my grandfather started reading Pooh to me and my big sister.  We spent hours on his lap, following the adventures of Pooh and Piglet and all, and my grandfather became so associated with Pooh (quoting him often, especially "No brains at all some of them.  Just a little fluff blown in by mistake"), that we started calling him Bear, and the name stuck.  Here is a picture of us (I am the one on the left, aged 2), unfortunately reading some other book.

When people talk about the Winnie the Pooh books in terms of the enchantment and joy of childhood, I give them serious side eye. That's not what I see in them.  

Take, for instance, the story of Eeyore's birthday. Piglet's joy at realizing he had a great present for Eeyore, a lovely balloon, his misery when the balloon pops, and the happy ending that it was still a good present is not enchanted joy.  It makes me weep, because I find it so very easy to feel what Piglet feels.

There is much more anxiety in these stories than there is joy--anxieties such as children feel and relate too deeply. These are not dismissed, but recognized and then alleviated with love, and this is what I took from the books to hold in my heart.

Here are some things I learned from the books-- that you are loveable even when you mess up and you haven't in fact been hunting a woozle, that there are people who will care when you get stuck in someone's door, that the stranger, in this case Kanga, may be new and different, but can enrich the community and become part of the family, that trying to fix people to suit your own expectations is a fool's errand, as Rabbit learned, that even when you are grown up, the things you loved as a child don't vanish, and many more.  I am all the better for having these things woven into my way of being in the world at a young age.  

But mostly the multiple readings of Winnie-the-Pooh were proof to me that I was deeply loved and also instilled in me that some books are like family that you can count on for your whole life.  The copies that Bear read to us were my mother's when she was little, and I read these same copies to my own children.  When my mother was hospitalized in agony for a week last summer, my sister and I read her own favorite childhood book out loud to her (Golden Cat, by Albert Paine, which I appreciated lots more as a child than I did this time around), which offered comfort.  I think that when I am in similar straits, I would like my children to take me back to the 100 Acre Wood, a place where I loved and was loved so very much.  (Probably the whole Piglet balloon episode will make me tear up for the millionth time, as it just did when I took the picture included here).

Happy 100th aniversery year to a beloved bear! I hope the new edition gives many, many children all the gifts these stories gave to me.

The Snowman Code, by Simon Stephenson

 A snowy day in front of a cozy fire provided perfect reading conditions for The Snowman Code, by Simon Stephenson (December 16, 2025, Simon and Schuster), a winter fairytale-ish  story of a girl and a snowman that will delight its target audience!

Ten-year-old Blessing is worried about her mother, who becomes sadder and sadder with every day that winter lasts (and this winter is lasting much longer than normal).  Blessing knows (from past experience) that if this keeps on, her mother will be taken to the hospital, and she herself will be sent to a foster family.  Because she can't make her mom sadder by telling her about being bullied at school, she just stops going.  Weeks of winter pass as she wanders through cold and snowy London. And then one day in a park she sees a snowman move!

Inadvertently, Blessing invokes an article of the "Snowman Code"--speaking to him six times compels him to answer.  And Albert (the snowman) and Blessing become friends, enjoying each other's company in the park, and even going on excursions outside it.  Albert, though very mild-mannered, is able to traumatize the bullying kids so thoroughly they will never trouble Blessing again.

Which is great....but Blessing's mom gets so sad that she's taken away, and Blessing must go to a foster family.  She is desperate for the winter to end, and the sun to help revive her mother.  Albert explains that the winter will last until the all the snowmen give up their current lives and melt, to be reborn when built next year by kids around the world.  Blessing is pretty sure Albert's keeping something back, and indeed he is.  He is the one snowman who won't let himself melt.

Albert's reason is very sweetly romantic--he's looking for the lost snow love of his life, last seen melting six hundred years ago.  He looks for her every time he's reborn, with no luck.  And this time, he won't melt till he finds her again.  So Blessing throws herself into helping him....and everything works out just right (although of course the necessary melting and goodbye is awfully hard....)

This is the perfect winter read for the 8-10 year old who loves whimsical silliness with a generous helping of friendship.  There's a great balance between these light elements of the book and Blessings real world concerns--these are treated with the serious they deserve (even though the solutions involve snowman magicalness....).  The illustrations, by Reggie Brown, add additional warmth and character to the snowscape.  In short, it's perfect if you are looking for a  winter read aloud that will make kids giggle and hold their interest beautifully!

disclaimer-review copy received from the publisher

Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, by Krystal Sutherland and Martin Seneviratne for Timeslip Tuesday

I have a fun one to offer for Timeslip Tuesday today--Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, by Krystal Sutherland and Martin Seneviratne (middle grade, October 21, 2025 by Nancy Paulsen Books).

British Sri Lankan twins Pearl and Patrick are both geniuses, Patrick more cerebral and drawn to the study of history, and Pearl pushing hard to win international renown for her scientific discoveries.  When the story begins, she's just about to put the finishing touches on her time machine....an effort that involved not only intellectual brilliance but also international heists that no ordinary teenagers would be able to carry off.   This has not left them much time to be ordinary kids with friends and such.

But the time machine works!  Going back to ancient Egypt and seeing King Tut in person is a blast, albeit one with mosquitos, and Pearl is sure fame will be hers.

Nope.  Turns out swatting one mosquito back in the past altered the whole course of history, and the kids return to a present in which Ancient Egypt remained the world's dominant civilization.  Everything is pyramidal.  And the kids are in deep trouble with the secret organization tasked with keeping the past the way it was supposed to happen. The Interdimensional Misconduct Enquiry, aka T.I.M.E., is not kind to those who transgress.  But worst of all for Pearl, she was by no means the first to invent time travel (TIME has been in business since the 19th century), and all her work was for nothing.

The folks running T.I.M.E. offer Pearl and Patrick a chance to redeem themselves by joining the organization, but they fail the test (it is hard not to interfere with the past when you know the tragedy that awaits).  And so they are turned out back into ordinary life, without Pearl's device.

There's a rival time travel organization, though, run by another genius...he recruits the kids, promising them the present of their dreams with just a few tweeks to the time line.  It turns out not to be a present they want to live in....in fact it is a neo classical dystopia.  And it is also a present in which T.I.M.E. was never established, so there won't be any temporal agents swooping in to fix things.

The only thing left for the twins to do is to travel back to 19th-century Sri Lanka, where the very first time machine, the one that let T.I.M.E. exist, was invented by an English explorer. More complications ensue, including one of the most epic battles in Sri Lankan history.  This was the most interesting part of the book, for me, in its depiction of under-represented history and culture, with colonial interloper getting credit for something he didn't actually make himself....And the twins, who have not had much interest in the Sri Lankan culture of their own family, come back to the present with their minds much more open to it.

It is wacky, wild adventure, hyperactive in its whirlwind of time and place.  Pearl is a bit over the top in her gizmo inventing brilliance, and at first I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the book, but as I relaxed into it and let all the shenanigans crash over me, I liked it just fine!

Time travel note-most contemporary altered present time travel books involve changes to the very recent past, so it was fun to see the consequences of longer ago disruptions.

The Magic Meadow, by Alexander Key, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Magic Meadow, by Alexander Key (1975), was given to me years ago by another blogger (for which I am still very grateful), and promptly fell into the "I know I want to read this, so I will put it off" trap for years.  But now it is read, and lo, it is a time slip book so I have something to post today!

You might recognize Alexander Key as the author of Escape to Witch Mountain (1968), his best-known book, in which two telepathic kids set of on a desperate quest to find their true home and their own people, pursued by evil men who want to exploit their gifts.  The Magic Meadow has similar themes, but isn't as good, which is why you've probably never heard of it.

Five bedridden children considered incurable are left to languish in an urban state hospital that's about to be condemned. The only escape they have is in imagining other places...and one such place is a beautiful, peaceful meadow. Turns out the power of their imagining is enough to teleport them there, along with the one nurse who cares about them (a black woman, who is also anxious to escape).  It's a rather desperate race for everyone to get out, as the kid who imagined the meadow has to teleport the others one at a time, and none of them are mobile (except the nurse, who is understandably worried about practicalities, and is able to assemble some supplies).

In the sun of the meadow, their bodies become magically stronger (not an all at once miracle cure, but still bona fide magical healing). But will this meadow, and the larger landscape, be a place that will sustain them?  There is a beautifully built building, with no clear purpose, that has lights but no electricity, and no road leading to it, and there are no other signs of people.

Yes, the children are happy, but there is an undercurrent of fear in the pastoral landscape-the strange shelter raises many questions, and there is constant anxiety about food....Should they set out to try to find other people (they are still too weak to walk far in a day), or stay put, risking starvation, and with a scary creature prowling outside at night....

I read it in a single quick siting, and almost liked it, especially the practical survival side of things which I would have liked more off. But I am too old and cynical for the ending, in which contact is made by the locals who are over the top harmonious and utopian. And disappointed that we never got to read anything past the first contact to see if there was anything of substance beneath the beautiful singing of passing bands of flying children etc.

And a bit let down actually that it turns out they'd time travelled to the future.  This is a case of "time travel as explanation for strange new place" and it's not my favorite subgenre unless the shock of cultural difference is explored in greater depth than it was here (this was the shallow end of the shallow end).

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Amy Shlitz

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, September 2025) is a beautiful, moving book that I loved!

It's the story of a girl, Tiph, who is in a snarled place in her life--friendless at her new school, overwhelmed by the demands place on her as big sister to her two baby halfsiblings, and with no particular sense of her own potential.  On a cold November day, she rescues a dog that has gotten loose from the old woman walking it, and then realizes the old woman needs her help too.  This starts a friendship that will change both her life and the old woman's.  It sets Tiph on a journey toward self-knowledge and contentment with the help of the old woman, who shares her love for doll houses and miniatures, and who is just as lonely as she is. But also there's help from a doll who's never been played with, who Tiph fell in love with through the glass of a shop window. 

The doll, Gretal, comes to life when no one is watching, and her point of view alternates with Tiph's.   She too is journeying--making her first friend with another doll, and then becoming Tiph's.  The fact that Tiph stole her from the shop doesn't matter to her, but it matters a lot to Tiph, who can't believe she has done such a wicked thing.  

The old woman has an empty dollhouse that her father, lost behind the Iron Curtain, made for her.  It arrived in America, where she and her mother escaped to, too late for her to care about it, but Tiph's entry into her life has made her want to bring it to life.  She has the means and the will to make it lovely, for Tiph, who she loves, and in doing so, finds that it holds a secret from her father that heals a wound in her spirit.

It was hard going for me in the middle when Tiph's snarled-ness is at its worst, but the lovely, moving, hug of an ending made it all worthwhile.  The family dynamics of Tiph's blended family, her impulsive shop lifting and recovery from that, which involved hard thinking and hard actions, and the way she makes her first friend at school, add grounded real-world content that balances the magical whimsy of the living dolls beautifully. Excellent doll house content as well. I would have loved it tons when I was making things for my own dollhouse, but also loved it tons as a grown-up!

Quick additional shoutout to the old lady's cat and dog, who are great characters in their own rights, who converse with the dolls and add comic relief! The cat, though, would of course hate being considered comic relief.

Cousins in the Time of Magic, by Emma Otheguy for this week's Timeslip Tuesday

Time worked in my favor of the first time in a while, so here's a Timeslip Tuesday book--Cousins in the Time of Magic, by Emma Otheguy (Feb 2025, Atheneum). Not only was it an exciting story, but I learned things I wasn't taught in school-I love it when that happens!

Jorge, Camila, and Siggy are cousins who are looked after by their Tia Zia...in a rather loose sense, because she's very scattered and has a lot on her mind. On the day the story begins, she has a diamond-encrusted sword to look after, which surprises the kids when they see it (which Tia Zia hadn't wanted them too). She also has a time portal in her backyard, which surprises the kids even more...and then they follow her through it, back to 1862, in a small boat. But their Tia is nowhere to be found. Instead, their boat attracts the attention of a Confederate war ship, and they take to the woods.

Camila always dreamed of having a magical adventure, like she'd read about in so many books, but the reality proves to be distinctly unpleasant. Lost in both time and space, and plunged into the Civil War, adventures seem over-rated. Fortunately, they meet a Cuban American boy looking for his father, a ballonist working for the Union. They join forces, narrowly missing capture by Confederates, and learning lots about the details of the war while rescuing their new friend's father. For instance, the French are about to invade Mexico...

Somehow the diamond sword has to be transported there, to be delivered to General Ignacio Zaragoza. The hydrogen balloon is their best chance, so off the three cousins go, landing in the middle of the town of Puebla just as the French are planning to attack. There they learn that Tia Zia is in Puebla as well, but finding her is complicated and dangerous as they witness first hand the Battle of Puebla that is the reason Mexico celebrates Cinco de Mayo....

Time travel here provides both adventure, education, and dangerous situations in a lovely mix! The characters of the three kids are distinct enough that each is taking in from their situation different things, which adds balance to the adventure part. Allies in the past, an enslaved boy in the Carolinas and an indigenous girl in Puebla, add cross cultural perspective and eye-opening time travel depth. And though there's a didactic element to the story, the learning goes down nice and easy and one is left with a greater understanding for and appreciation of the diverse Latine communities in American past and present. (As well as, in my case, learning about the Battle of Puebla for the first time, and how pivotal it was not just for Mexico, but for the US, which is a tad embarrassing....)

The Tinkerers, by Caroline Carlson, for Timeslip Tuesday

After another few horribly busy weeks, I have peaceful time for a time slip Tuesday review, and it is a good one--The Tinkerers, by Caroline Carlson (middle grade, Oct 7, 2025, Candlewick).  It is always a lovely thing to get a review copy of a new middle fantasy from a favorite author, and (if you are me) even more lovely to find it has time travel!

Peter's life in Stargazers Valley is one nestled in routines of helping his parents run their guesthouse, looking after/chasing after his younger siblings, drinking hot chocolate at the local cafe with his best friend Linnet, and looking up at the night sky lit up with Skeins of starstuff, beautiful and magical, telling the stories of the Spinner and the Weaver and the mischievous Jackanapes up in the stars to his little brother.  He's used to visitors, who are almost always there to climb the mountains or to investigate the starstuff that falls on them, and so when he meets a pair of older travelers on the road, pulling a cart heaped full of miscellany behind them, he is quick to direct them to the family's inn.  These tinkerers are researchers from the Imperial College, but they aren't like any Peter's ever met before, and they don't exactly become friendly with their colleagues already in residence....

There's a reason for this, carted along behind them on their way to the valley.  Starstuff can do magical, wonderous things, and so it is a tightly controlled substance that only a very few are allowed to manipulate and experiment with.  And no one is allowed by the Empress to make, say, a tinkered together device that can turn back time....When Peter figures out what the tinkerers have brought with them to the inn, he can't resist the temptation to fix small mistakes...no one notices, and life goes on, but better.  But then, when the biggest mistake of his life, made years ago, threatens his family, turning back time seems the only way out...

I started reading this (mostly) cozy fantasy back in May, but then life got messy, and I didn't want my enjoyment spoiled. So I started from the beginning again a few weeks ago, and did not in the least bit mind re-reading the first 200 pages. This is one for those who like fantasy with young protagonists who are realistically having concerns more germane to the young (which is why middle grade fantasy is better escapism than books for grown ups.) 

It is also for those who like stories that are rooted fast in a particular place (a very nice place in this case), and rooted in family and community, with likeable characters. It might seem too idyllic to swallow, but there are dark threads of a dangerously oppressive government woven into the story.  There are hints of this early, given in the way the story is told--mostly we are reading an account Peter is giving to the government, but sometimes we are reading notes from surveillance cameras, which is disquieting.  Possibly these dystopian threads could have been pulled at harder (Peter is not by nature one to instinctively fight against the status quo, unlike his friend Linnet, an artist who is furious her picture of the Empress as a many-headed monster is not given a green light), but the tension gives a spice to the story, and becomes important to the larger plot.

In any event, I am very grateful to Caroline Carlson for writing a book that is just right for me, and to Candlewick for realizing this and thoughtfully sending it my way.   I will probably buy my own hardcover and reread it every five years or so (now I've done the first read, it has become one I can read when stressed since I know what happens....).

Costumes for Time Travelers, by A.R. Capetta, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip Tuesday is a YA romance/adventure-Costumes for Time Travelers, by A.R. Capetta.  If you like your time travel full of bopping around to different times, with alternate timelines threatening all the characters hold dear, time tangled romance, and also are a fan of fashions of many eras, and the sewing thereof, this is the book for you!

Calisto has lived their life in Pocket, a peaceful island outside of the river of time.  It's a place where those who time travel visit to acquire what they need for their journeys--the boots that let them pass through the mists into different times, and the clothes they need to blend in with the locals.  Calisto works in their grandmother's shop, helping to make these costumes.  They don't time travel themselves, and they have no particular desire to.

Then Fawkes bursts into Pocket.  He doesn't time travel in planned journeys like everyone else, but bounces in constant motion from one time to the next, both past and future.  And when he sees Calisto, he recognizes them....though this is their first meeting.  Their meeting, however, is just a prelude to a dangerous adventure into the past.  There is a sinister cadre of dangerous men (fascists, Calisto's grandma calls them) who consider time travelers abominations, and who have given up their lives in ordinary time to hunt them down in the mists between times.  And there's another time traveler, whose twisted greed is shaking the stability of times past, and changing the future to come (in a bad way). 

Calisto and Fawkes are (for reasons that make good sense) the only ones in the right places and right times, with the right gifts, to make sure that they have the right time for a future together for themselves and all they hold dear.

I myself really really liked Pocket and the people living there (a diverse group from many times, with interesting backgrounds and professions) and would have enjoyed a simple cozy romance set there with time travel on the side.  I also really liked the crafty bits about making clothes.  I was disappointed when Calisto and Fawkes set out on their adventures (and things got a lot less cozy) but their visits to past and future, and the foiling of the bad guys, were good reading too.  

Unfortunately, the big heavy hitting ideas skittering on the edges of the story never quite emerged fully enough to add heart-ripping gravitas to the adventures, and the bad guy trouncing of the ending was lacking in tension or heart-pulling emotion. It remained for me a bouncy adventure, and not much more.

The Island of Forgotten Gods, by Victor Piñero

The Island of Forgotten Gods, by Victor Piñero (middle grade fantasy, August 5, 2025, Sourcebooks Young Readers) is 

--a summer holiday story in which three cousins visit their grandma in Puerto Rico, and have wild adventures while dealing with the emotional fallout from parental troubles back home

--a story of an ordinary kid swept into a mythological heritage he had no idea existed

--a (fictionalized) story of Indigenous survival in the face of colonial oppression

 --a love letter to Puerto Rico that opens the reader's eyes to its beauties and its struggles, seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy, young enough to feel that it is paradise, but old enough to start seeing the cracks....

and all of these are tied together beautifully!

Nico loves Puerto Rico, and his abuela....but this summer things are off for him.  His parents are sending him alone, and he's worried that the tensions in their marriage are getting worse, and he's unhappy that he his dream of being a famous film director has hit a roadblock, with his high school hopes for a place at the best New York high school for film dashed.  Puerto Rico isn't quite the dream like place he remembered it being--it's a place struggling to recover from disasters (the zika epidemic of 2026, followed by Hurricane Maria) and it feels almost like there's a curse on the place.

But still, it's Puerto Rico, a place he loves, and his two cousins, sisters who are both guaranteed to make things interesting in their own distinct ways, are there for company.   Then things become even more interesting, when they encounter a monstrous shadowy creature that seems to them to be the mythical Chupacabra.  It seems to be following them....and more interesting still (not in a good way), they are then stalked by a shadowy men who seem to wish them harm. The summer vacation is turning into a nightmare....

Nico is inspired to make a documentary that will him with his high school dream, and the Chupacabra mystery seems like a sure-fire winner.  But though this project gives purposes to the days, it becomes ever clearer that there's a bigger, more dangerous and more magical story than he could ever have imagined unfolding,  It's tied to the deep history of the island, and the Tainos, its original people, supposedly lost to European colonization, but still there, still holding onto their culture in secret in this version of reality.

The fate of the island hangs in the balance, and Nico and his cousins find themselves confronting mythology made real as they race to discover what role they can play in saving it.

It's a fast paced and gripping read.  There's enough mythology and magic to make it work for fantasy fans (and I was happy to read a story in which the main character does not himself have magical powers, but instead uses his camera skills to help save the day).  The setting is great; it will bring Puerto Rico alive for kids in the US states who haven't ever given it much thought.  (I now hope to visit someday and will reread this when that time comes!).  The mundane worries about divorce and worries about achieve high school dreams ground the story nicely, and it's great to see Nico's documentary turn from clickbait folklore to a deeper, more thoughtful project about the depressed state of the island, and it's an example of kids doing something to make real world change for the better that will doubtless resonate with many readers!

In short, highly recommend.

Personal connection-- I spend 4th to 6th grade at Saint Andrews School in the Bahamas (I was a foreign service kid), and we were divided, UK style, into four Houses named after Indigenous peoples of the Carribean--Lucayan, Carib, Arawak, and Taino, none of which we were actually taught anything about.  I was a Taino, so happy to meet them in the pages of this book!

disclaimer--review copy received from the publisher

Future Me Saves the World (and Ruins My Life) by Leah Cypess for Timeslip Tuesday

Future Me Saves the World (and Ruins My Life) by Leah Cypess, illustrated by Wes Molebash (middle grade, Aladdin 2025) is this week's time travel book.  It's squarely aimed at the younger middle grade reader with a generous font and funny illustrations, and although it was not to my personal taste, I can see this target audience enjoying it lots and lots!

Fourth-grader Ethan is visited regularly by his 39-year-old future self, who knows how to get him out of bed and on track for school in the mornings; this is a taken for granted thing right at the beginning of the book.  But then the point of the time travel emerges when Future Ethan reveals that the substitute teacher of the day will become a horribly powerful evil dictator and ruin the world....unless Ethan can make sure that her experience with his class isn't terrible enough to drive her out of teaching.  This proves to be impossible; Ethan is a small fish swimming against the current of cruel mayhem.  He does offer words of comfort and encouragement, but will that be enough?

Future Ethan also had another task--to get his classmate Tamara to sign up for the accelerated math program, for secret time travel reasons (thought Future Ethan is actually bad about keeping secrets...)  Tamara has unspecified learning challenges and is very off-beat; not someone Ethan has ever made any effort to get to know.  So when he starts seeking Tamara out, intruding on her place of safety, the school library, his best friend Brian becomes suspicious and hurt.  On top of this, future Ethan has revealed that he has lost touch with Brian, and Ethan's mind is blown, in a bad way, by the thought of his forever best friend just falling by the wayside of life. 

It is a very difficult time for Ethan, and his future self doesn't help much. But in the end, everything works out, except that the substitute teacher becomes the school librarian (removing all the graphic novels on her first day), and ends up the evil dictator of the nation's school reading curricula, killing all joy in reading for future generations of kids.

This is just the sort of book she would not have in her school library.

Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, for Timeslip Tuesday

I started writing this review for a Timeslip Tuesday weeks ago, but it has been a hard month.  I'm glad I came back to it though!

Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai (YA, Zephyr March 2023), is a wild ride through time, though there's no traditional time travel.  The titular catfish is the giant that swims beneath the land, and its thrashing is what causes earthquakes.  And then, at the beginning of this story, it causes a time quake as well.

Sora is 11 when this quake strikes, fracturing the country into different time zones--some where time runs fast, some where it runs slow, but most still where it runs normally.  Her Japanese mother was lost somewhere in this confusion of shaking time and space, and she is determined to find her, travelling in and out of slow (where everything is perfectly preserved) and fast (where all human made things have decayed) times, all of which are haunted...Her father, a white American, also travels through the different zones, but this is his job as a scientist.  The two of them, throwing themselves at the mystery that broke their lives, are barely holding it together in the real world of ordinary time.  And the time travel seems to be taking a strange toll on her father's health....

It is a fascinating experience to travel the time zones with Sora, who on top of her grief and the strangeness surrounding her home in ordinary time feels isolated by being neither Japanese or American enough...so for much of the book, the main feeling is troubling adriftness...

The last third or so of the book picks up the pace markedly--Sora leaves her home town, partly to visit her one close friend and almost boyfriend who's gone off to college, but mostly to talk to a professor who might help her understand the time phenomena better.  The professors prize student, a girl Sora's age, becomes a friend, and then more than a friend, giving Sora a vibrant link to reality that she badly needed.  

But even more than this nice romantic element, the story starts to sing with lovely touches of the fantastical and mythological spilling out from beyond reality, and Sora and her new friend must head off on a quest deeper into time strangenesses than she has ever travelled, looking for answers that might save herself and her father, and maybe even give her the peace of accepting that her mother has gone beyond finding. And maybe even to the Catfish itself...

So in many ways it's a lovely and interesting book, and the romance is very sweet.  But it wasn't quite as lovely to read as I'd hoped.  For one thing, Sora is so consumed by her search for her missing mother that she seems very one dimensional. The fact that is told in close 1st person means that we don't see the parts of her that other characters see and appreciate, just her own rather circular thoughts and feelings, which include a lot of negativity about herself.  So it is hard not to feel negative about her, since that is what the reader must experience.

I also would have liked the mythological, magical elements to come in even sooner and stronger than they did, but that's just a personal preference.

And finally, the time zones are confusing as heck, impossible to explain, and full of unanswered questions about how they work and what is happening to living things within the different time zones. For instance, it seems like a bad idea for kids to go into fast zones to cram for tests, because they are aging while they are there, and presumably shortening their lifespans in the real time.  There are far too many questions of this sort for the author to address, and wisely, she doesn't try even as she sends her main character out looking for answers.  So one has to just relax and let it happen, which might not be everyone's cup of tea.  It sure does leave the reader with a lot to ponder though, and that's one of the best gifts a book can give you.

Sandy and the Hollow Book, by Meta Mayne Reid, for Timeslip Tuesday

Sandy and the Hollow Book, by Meta Mayne Reid, is the sequel to The McNeils at Rathcapple, and if you haven't read that one then you will find this one confusing.....The first book introduces Sandy and Richard as they move the family manor in rural Ireland, inhabited by an unwelcoming elderly uncle and his vast collection of books (he is researching local history). The two kids get to learn local history in a different way, through time travel, which comes in handy when they take part in the local pageant organized by the lady of the local castle.

So here in the sequel, I was expecting both more pageant and more time travel.  The pageant part proved to be much more important.  The main driver of the story is that the lady of the castle feels too old and tired to take it on again, and the kids and their friends set to work to make it happen.  The uncle has no patience for theatrical liberties taken with the past, so Sandy sneaks into his library to try to ferret out fresh content...and finds a hollowed-out book, in which is a small collection of random things--like bits of vegetation, a rock, a button....and some torn out quotations from Virgil (sic).

These small things, plus a visit from the magical Angus, the horseriding Spirit of Place who was a big part of book one, send the kids and friends back to the Irish famine, where they inhabit, variously, the wealthy who have food and the poor who don't and come back a lot more famine aware.  Good pageant content, bad time travel--they aren't themselves in the past, and after a while they don't even remember being there.  Time travel tourism at its worst, if you ask me.

Small adventures and happenings occur, including a rather nicely done mountain injury and an interesting mystery from the more recent past being solved,  and the pageant is a success.  The things in the box have only one more very minor bit to play, that doesn't involve time travel, and I was left feeling a tad disappointed (thought the Vergil quotes turned out to be interesting, which I appreciated).

In short, enjoyable as a story, but a time travel let down. Worth picking up if you, like me, are a fan of vintage childrens books set in Ireland and see it going for a reasonable price (especially since you may be able to resell it for a higher one....) and a must have if you are writing an essay on historical pageants in 20th-century literature for the young (which I am not).

The Secret of Lillian Velvet, by Jaclyn Moriarty, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Secret of Lillian Velvet, by Jaclyn Moriarty (2023), is the fifth book of the very excellent Kingdoms and Empires series, which begins with The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone.  Last week I went nosing around in my tbr shelves (I have a problem) for a book I knew I would really really like reading, and this was the one I found (and it did work beautifully!).  And happily for me, it turned out to have a timeslip element to it, so this Tuesday was sorted!  It's not a particular spoiler, as the time slipping is a feature of the story and not the main plot point....

The main plot point is, as the title suggests, the secret of a young girl, Lillian Velvet, growing up with a horrible controlling and unloving grandmother in Australia.  Her life is lived inside the house and its small fenced in garden, doing school work and household tasks under grandmother's gimlet eye.  But then, much to her surprise, her grandmother gives her a jar of gold tokens as a birthday gift.  And a mysterious stranger takes them in exchange for visits to another world (which the reader of the previous books quickly recognizes as the Kingdoms and Empires).

There she finds herself, in each of her visits, confronted with someone who needs her help, which she freely gives to the best of her ability.  Again the reader of the previous books will recognize many of these people....except that their ages are wrong. This is the time slip part--she is visiting different time periods, which adds complexity to experience and leads to some twists and turns that are important to how the whole ensemble comes together.  But larger story aside, each small adventure is zesty in its way, especially when you get to meet old friends.

And meanwhile, the family of Bronte Mettlestone is gathering for a reunion with Bronte's missing grandparents, now returned.  But it seems it's not actually safe for them, after all....and it's up to Lillian Velvet, and the secret that she herself only learns toward the end of the book, to save them from malevolent magic.  I am not saying what the secret is.

This series is so much fun, with many delightful characters, magical twists, and extraordinary settings.  In this book, there's also the pleasure of seeing poor Lillian Velvet's cruelly constricted world widening as she makes friends with the Mettelstones, and getting the happy end she deserves.  I liked it so much that I think I really need to go out and buy all the earlier books, so I can have the pleasure of reading them all again at my leisure....and there is just enough room on my shelves for them, and room even for more new books in the series which I hope happens.

The Village Beyond the Mist, by Sachiko Kashiwaba

The Village Beyond the Mist, by Sachiko Kashiwaba, is I think the most purely magical book I've read so far this year.  It is unapologetically exuberant in its lovely fantastical-ness.  It's also the inspiration for the Studio Ghibli movie, Spirited Away, although the story is quite different. First published in Japan in 1975, it's now been translated for English readers (May 27, 2025 from Restless Books), and I have now read it twice in three months, and I bet if I had been given it in 1975, when I was 8, my copy would now be in tatters....

Instead of going to her grandmother's for the summer as usual, Lena is being sent instead to a remote village she's never heard of.  When her train reaches the end of the line, she finds no one to meet her, and no one to help her get up the mountain to where it might (or might not) be.... Perturbed but undaunted, she sets off, and even when a strange mist envelopes her, she keeps going.

On the other side of the mist is a very small and very strange village.  In the middle of a forest is a cobbled street, with six buildings. One is a guest house, where a room is waiting for Lena. It's a lovely room, but there's a price-the rather fierce woman who runs it demands that Lena work for her room and board.  And so the book spools through Lena's time helping out at five magical shops in the village, each of which comes with its own challenges and wonders, and quirky characters.  

There is no other plot, and so it is bit episodic (readers looking for forward momentum toward plot points will not care for it as much as those looking for a dreamlike escape from reality with lovely pictures in their minds eye.  This would be me--I liked it more the second time, as the first time I had no guarantee that the magical peace of the village was safe from peace-destroying disaster).  But the episodic aspect of the story would, I think, make it a wonderful read aloud, and Lena is such a clearly drawn character, learning and appreciating and helping in each place she works, that it is a coherent story, progressing smoothly from beginning to end.

In short, it is great, warm-hearted fun for the right reader! (which would be me, and not just child-me-- I'm hanging on to the ARC I got from the publisher, in case I need a nice magical break from grown-up real world problems....)

Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry, for Timeslip Tuesday

Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry (1996), was supposed to be my time travel Tuesday book two weeks ago, but life got in the way....so here's just a quick look at it, enough so that I can add it to my master list of time travel books.

Jo Ellen and her mother were everything to each other, until her mother falls in love, and Jo is confronted with the horrible fact that she will now have a stepfather.  In order to facilitate the honeymoon, Jo ends up being sent off to stay with an elderly cousin, Granty, who lives in a fabulous replica of a Scottish castle in the middle of nowhere, with a strange "moon window" up in the attic...  And although Jo's determined to wreck the honeymoon by running away, she's fascinated by the place in spite of herself.

Even more so, when she finds herself slipping back in time through the moon window.

Not only does she meet the little girl who will become Granty, she starts to learn that there is a dark story behind the grand estate....the story of "Witch Ellen," the Scottish woman who had the castle built, who is very much still a force to be reckoned with, and not in a good way.

Time travel and secrets reveled in the present bring the mystery to a terrible climax, that ties up loose threads the reader didn't even know where waiting to be tied.

It was a mixed bag for me.  I thought Jo was a brat, but also thought her mother was a brat too; for instance, moving them into her new husband's place and not taking old familiar furnishings that Jo loved with them.  I like big old houses in stories, and this one had some nice details, but it was strangely static and never became quite real.  This actually fits with the plot beautifully, but was disappointing for me.

I did enjoy the time travel; there's a nice sense of strangeness to the first trips especially, and a nice ratcheting up of time travel tension as things progress.  But though it added to the story, and the characterization of both Jo and Granty, I can't remember that it actually functioned much with regards to the larger plot point of the malevolent magic at the heart of the story.

In short, though I was quite happy to be reading it, and interested enough in what was happening that the pages turned quickly, I'll probably never read it again.  But I bet I would have if I'd been given a copy as a 9 year old.

The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles (October 2024, Union Square Kids, middle grade), combines time travel with another favorite subgenre of mine, the magical boarding school. and I enjoyed it lots!

Issa did not want to go to the Siren School.  She wanted to travel with her parents.  But her magical gift of being a conduit for the dead was out of control, and her parents felt she needed a structured education.  So off to boarding school it was.  

The school isn't awful.  There's the chance to make friends for the first time, lots of magic to learn, and a beautiful campus...but before Issa can change her mind about not wanting to be there, tragedy strikes, and her parents are killed driving away from the drop-off.  

Issa knows that one of the classes taught at the Siren School is horology...the magic of bending time.  And if time can be bent, maybe the past can be undone, and she can save her parents.  So along with all the nice school stuff--friends and magical animals and such--she's driven to learn more magic as quickly as possible. 

The school might offer great classes, but it also offers nightmares, hinted at by its past of plantation slavery, its disturbing headmistress, and warnings to the current students about the Night Children.  And the more she sees of her new school, the more Issa is distracted from her personal goal by the growing realization of the horror at the heart of the school.  A horror that plans to add her to the graves of many other past students.....

In short, it's a fun story of a plucky smart girl vs ancient evil, with interesting twists, including the time slipping at the end.  Middle grade fans of magical schools should eat it up, fans of horror, though, might be a bit let down, as I was, by the horror turning out to be relatively straightforward and not as deliciously creepy as the Night Children made it sound.  It's also not one for pure time travel fans--the time travel bit was there to drive Issa's story and not a point in its own right, and it ended up happening in a way that didn't feel quite earned.

That being said, the mix of it all made for good reading, and the successful confrontation with the evil at the school's heart was beautifully earned by Issa's stubbornness and strength of character, with the help of friends, the ancestors and their magic, a mysteriously haunting boy, and two sweet cats!