Time Villains, by Victor Piñeiro , for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay me!  I have my  Timeslip Tuesday act together this week, with Time Villains, by Victor Piñeiro (Sourcebooks, May, 2021). And it's an exciting one (as the title suggests)!

It starts out peacefully enough, with Javi Santiago and his kid sister Brady dragged out to yet another antique store by their dad.  But the table that comes home with them is is anything but ordinary.  For one thing, it purrs...and that's not all.

Javi needs to bring his English grade up, so he can stay in the same class as his best friend, Wiki (who came by his nickname honestly).  And so Javi needs to ace the assignment that roles around every year--if you could invite any three people to dinner, who would you invite, what would you talk about, and what would you feed them?  Javi's a great cook, so he's not too worried about the menu, but who to invite?  Brainstorming at the table they decide on  young Mozart, the Earl of Sandwich (Javi loves making sandwiches), and when Javi asks that the third guest be someone academic and historical, who sounds scholarly, Wiki picks someone named  Edward Teach.

The table is all set for the guests...and then it starts to shake, with a strange noise coming from underneath it.  Investigating, the kids find a hidden compartment, in which there's a bell, and when they ring it, something extraordinary happens. 

There at the table are child Mozart, the Earl of Sandwich, and Edward Teach--more commonly known as the most notorious pirate of them all, Blackbeard.  It's an awkward dinner party, for sure.  And when it's time to send the guests home again (at least, that's what the bell's supposed to do, they figure), Blackbeard escapes, running off into the woods.

Javi gets an A on the assignment, but to his horror Blackbeard shows up at school, determined to get the bell and summon his pirate crew!  His threats seem all to terribly real, but fortunately the kids don't have to take him down on their own.  The school is staffed with a most unusual group of teachers, and Wiki's Aunt Nancy, who the kids have known all their lives, turns out to be a personage they could never have dreamt of meeting.

Wild hijinks ensue, and Blackbeard almost succeeds in making the school staff walk the plank (the school diving board).  But Javi, though he might not be as fiercely brave as his little sister, or as fiercely smart as Wiki, has it in him to be just the hero that's needed to save the day (with the help of a handful of other allies quickly summoned with the help of the magical table and its bell). 

I appreciated that Javi and his family are Puerto Rican, and Wiki is Haitian; their diverse cultures aren't the point of the story, but come up enough in the course of events to add richness to it (especially with regards to Javi's cooking!)

It's a fun twist on time travel, with nice attention paid to Blackbeard's fiercely intelligent efforts to figure out how the modern world works.  I would have liked it better if there hadn't been fictional characters thrown into the mix as well (like Dr. Jekyll and Don Quihote).  But kids who enjoy the adventures of story characters (real or imaginary) thrown into the real world will probably not complain!  In short, a solid series opener with high entertainment value (and a bit of historical and literary education thrown in!).