Today's Timeslip book is The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison (1978).
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Mine, happily picked up at a booksale, turned out to be a review copy (very cool to see the retro promotional info, shown below), but I don't think I'll send in two clippings as requested.
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I'm making no effort to hold back on spoilers here with this whacky 1970s sci fi story for kids, so if you are a little kid who's never read any science fiction (which you aren't), go read the book and see if you agree with the two Goodreads readers whose first sci fi it was, and who loved it before I ruin everything.
The Other Place starts with Elena and her dad driving off to the house in the country (USA) where they are now going live, following the death of Elena's mom. Things get weird, and Elena can't see the road behind them anymore, and her dad's stilted remarks don't do much to sooth her growing sense of wrongness. The cabin is fine, and seems normal enough, except that Elena is woken up by strange noises, and goes off into the woods to see what's happening, and the townsfolk are dancing around in the middle of nowhere.
A trip to the store the next day adds to the weirdness, when she sees the storekeeper has eyes filmed over with jelly...as do the kids and the teacher in the one room schoolhouse. One kid, with mostly non jelly eyes, is friendly, lending her a horse to ride, but when she tries to ride her way out of the valley, she finds she can't. She's stuck.
Turns out the townsfolk are aliens in a little bubble cut off physically and temporally from the rest of the world, her mom was one of them, and her dad has volunteered to help them fix their space craft so they can go home. Happily for Elena, the friendly kid helps her get out of the valley, but her dad wants to go off with the aliens because he loves his dead alien wife more than he cares about his living kid (the book does not say it quite like this....). And when Elena escapes after what felt like weeks away from the city, almost no time has passed, and her aunt is there to meet her....and her aunt has.....JELLY EYES! The end.
The illustrations add a certain 1970s something to the story.
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This sounds like it should get caught in a time slip and stay there.
ReplyDeleteThe ending sounds like the best part! I hope the aunt isn't annoyed she missed the space ship home but I guess we'll never know unless there was a sequel.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the one I read as a middle school child in 1979-82 time frame. I was intrigued by this book and that’s why searched the internet to try and find it again. I am remembering the road disappearing behind them and isn’t there a Star Dust hotel or motel in it too?
ReplyDeletesorry I just now saw this--yes, the road disappears behind them, but I don't remember the hotel (though it could well have been there!)
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