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.
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