Magic of the Black Mirror, by Ruth Chew, for Timeslip Tuesday

Someday I will have read every juvenile time travel book of the 20th century (except the Magic Tree house books).  I won't necessarily have enjoyed them all (I feel that the ones that were really good rose to the top and stayed in print) but they will be read.  And it was in this completionist spirit that I just read Magic of the Black Mirror, by Ruth Chew (1990).  It was not a dislike of Chew's books that made me reluctant; they are fine fantasy of yesteryear.  It is that this particular one is time travel back to the precontact period Northwest Coast, and the experienced reader of vintage fiction knows that at best this will be uncomfortable, and at worst horribly racist and colonialist.  Fortunately for me, this turned out to be the former.

Amanda and Will are in a museum exhibit of Northwest coast art, when they see themselves in a strange black mirror.  Next thing they know, they've arrived in a Native village.  Happily, a Native boy, Fox-of-the-water, who befriends them.  Lots of time travel tourism ensues.  Amanda and Will are very interested in everything, are bothered by the enslaved workers captured from other tribes, are warm, comfortable and well-fed, and are a little anxious about getting home again.  They get home again.

It is a reasonable description of a generic Northwest coast community, superficial but not deprecating.  The one bit that I found interesting was the kids' interaction with the community's medicine man, who is set apart from everyone else because of his calling, and lonely as a result.  Though this is somewhat questionable, it was just about the only emotionally resonant bit of the time travel experience.  And I appreciated it that Chew did not treat the medicine man's work with contempt, but described it at face value.  

So I guess as an introduction to Northwest coast culture for younger readers written from an outsider perspective it's not terrible, but it's really not an interesting story.  Straight up time travel as tourism/educational opportunity. That being said, there is a slightly though-provoking time travel twist--the black mirror is an obsidian slab polished by the medicine man after he hears how the kids got there; and if he hadn't made it, they never would have come....