The Mud Puddlers, by Pamela Rushby, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Mud Puddlers, by Pamela Rushby (middle grade, April 2023, Walker Books Australia), is a must read for anyone in the ven diagram of liking mud larking and liking juvenile time travel, as it combines both in a nicely absorbing package!

Nina is tremendously angry that her parents are going off on a scientific expedition to Antarctica and shipping her from their home in Australia to her Aunt Bea in London.  Even the rather cool prospect of living in a converted barge on the Thames, and spending time with her aunt who she has liked before being packaged off to stay with her, does nothing to alleviate Nina's angry sulking.  The first chinks in her studied disinterested in everything and everyone come when she gradually becomes drawn into her aunt's hobby, mud larking.  

At first the discoveries in the mud are just interesting and thought provoking, but then there's a twist--they begin to take Nina back in time.  The very odd old hardcore mudlarking woman who lives nearby also has this knack and warns Nina that she must always keep the object that took her back in time safe, or else....

And of course she doesn't.

The time travel starts as tourism, taking Nina back to observe various eras of London's past, which was fine and not uninteresting, but rather slow.  Then about 3/4 of the way through, Nina is stuck in the past while being evacuated from London in WW II. In the train station, she loses the gas mask that had taken her back in time which she needs to get home again. After arriving in Wales, she and a boy desperate to get back to his own family set out for London, with one "borrowed" bike between them, not enough money, and the fear of being caught and dragged back again nipping at their heals. Their journey becomes do-able when they are taken on as crew by two women doing war work running a canal boat, and I do wish this had been given more page time!

Nicely absorbing, as I said above, but I can't go any further.  Mostly this is because Nina hangs on to her angry sulking so long it became unbelievable; it took being stuck in the past to change her perspective.  It was also a bit because the arc of the story never pushed quite hard enough into truly gripping emotion.  As an archaeologist, there were small material culture irritations too, like Aunt Bea saying you can't tell historic nails apart, which is wrong (it is pretty easy to tell a hand wrought nail from a machine cut nail), and Aunt Bea saying the reason why pipe stems are a common find is that pipes were disposable (almost true, but it was more a matter of breaking off the used end of the pipe and working your way to the bowl). So I can't say with conviction that I'll read it again, though I might well do so.