The Snowman Code, by Simon Stephenson

 A snowy day in front of a cozy fire provided perfect reading conditions for The Snowman Code, by Simon Stephenson (December 16, 2025, Simon and Schuster), a winter fairytale-ish  story of a girl and a snowman that will delight its target audience!

Ten-year-old Blessing is worried about her mother, who becomes sadder and sadder with every day that winter lasts (and this winter is lasting much longer than normal).  Blessing knows (from past experience) that if this keeps on, her mother will be taken to the hospital, and she herself will be sent to a foster family.  Because she can't make her mom sadder by telling her about being bullied at school, she just stops going.  Weeks of winter pass as she wanders through cold and snowy London. And then one day in a park she sees a snowman move!

Inadvertently, Blessing invokes an article of the "Snowman Code"--speaking to him six times compels him to answer.  And Albert (the snowman) and Blessing become friends, enjoying each other's company in the park, and even going on excursions outside it.  Albert, though very mild-mannered, is able to traumatize the bullying kids so thoroughly they will never trouble Blessing again.

Which is great....but Blessing's mom gets so sad that she's taken away, and Blessing must go to a foster family.  She is desperate for the winter to end, and the sun to help revive her mother.  Albert explains that the winter will last until the all the snowmen give up their current lives and melt, to be reborn when built next year by kids around the world.  Blessing is pretty sure Albert's keeping something back, and indeed he is.  He is the one snowman who won't let himself melt.

Albert's reason is very sweetly romantic--he's looking for the lost snow love of his life, last seen melting six hundred years ago.  He looks for her every time he's reborn, with no luck.  And this time, he won't melt till he finds her again.  So Blessing throws herself into helping him....and everything works out just right (although of course the necessary melting and goodbye is awfully hard....)

This is the perfect winter read for the 8-10 year old who loves whimsical silliness with a generous helping of friendship.  There's a great balance between these light elements of the book and Blessings real world concerns--these are treated with the serious they deserve (even though the solutions involve snowman magicalness....).  The illustrations, by Reggie Brown, add additional warmth and character to the snowscape.  In short, it's perfect if you are looking for a  winter read aloud that will make kids giggle and hold their interest beautifully!

disclaimer-review copy received from the publisher

Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, by Krystal Sutherland and Martin Seneviratne for Timeslip Tuesday

I have a fun one to offer for Timeslip Tuesday today--Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, by Krystal Sutherland and Martin Seneviratne (middle grade, October 21, 2025 by Nancy Paulsen Books).

British Sri Lankan twins Pearl and Patrick are both geniuses, Patrick more cerebral and drawn to the study of history, and Pearl pushing hard to win international renown for her scientific discoveries.  When the story begins, she's just about to put the finishing touches on her time machine....an effort that involved not only intellectual brilliance but also international heists that no ordinary teenagers would be able to carry off.   This has not left them much time to be ordinary kids with friends and such.

But the time machine works!  Going back to ancient Egypt and seeing King Tut in person is a blast, albeit one with mosquitos, and Pearl is sure fame will be hers.

Nope.  Turns out swatting one mosquito back in the past altered the whole course of history, and the kids return to a present in which Ancient Egypt remained the world's dominant civilization.  Everything is pyramidal.  And the kids are in deep trouble with the secret organization tasked with keeping the past the way it was supposed to happen. The Interdimensional Misconduct Enquiry, aka T.I.M.E., is not kind to those who transgress.  But worst of all for Pearl, she was by no means the first to invent time travel (TIME has been in business since the 19th century), and all her work was for nothing.

The folks running T.I.M.E. offer Pearl and Patrick a chance to redeem themselves by joining the organization, but they fail the test (it is hard not to interfere with the past when you know the tragedy that awaits).  And so they are turned out back into ordinary life, without Pearl's device.

There's a rival time travel organization, though, run by another genius...he recruits the kids, promising them the present of their dreams with just a few tweeks to the time line.  It turns out not to be a present they want to live in....in fact it is a neo classical dystopia.  And it is also a present in which T.I.M.E. was never established, so there won't be any temporal agents swooping in to fix things.

The only thing left for the twins to do is to travel back to 19th-century Sri Lanka, where the very first time machine, the one that let T.I.M.E. exist, was invented by an English explorer. More complications ensue, including one of the most epic battles in Sri Lankan history.  This was the most interesting part of the book, for me, in its depiction of under-represented history and culture, with colonial interloper getting credit for something he didn't actually make himself....And the twins, who have not had much interest in the Sri Lankan culture of their own family, come back to the present with their minds much more open to it.

It is wacky, wild adventure, hyperactive in its whirlwind of time and place.  Pearl is a bit over the top in her gizmo inventing brilliance, and at first I wasn't sure I'd enjoy the book, but as I relaxed into it and let all the shenanigans crash over me, I liked it just fine!

Time travel note-most contemporary altered present time travel books involve changes to the very recent past, so it was fun to see the consequences of longer ago disruptions.

The Magic Meadow, by Alexander Key, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Magic Meadow, by Alexander Key (1975), was given to me years ago by another blogger (for which I am still very grateful), and promptly fell into the "I know I want to read this, so I will put it off" trap for years.  But now it is read, and lo, it is a time slip book so I have something to post today!

You might recognize Alexander Key as the author of Escape to Witch Mountain (1968), his best-known book, in which two telepathic kids set of on a desperate quest to find their true home and their own people, pursued by evil men who want to exploit their gifts.  The Magic Meadow has similar themes, but isn't as good, which is why you've probably never heard of it.

Five bedridden children considered incurable are left to languish in an urban state hospital that's about to be condemned. The only escape they have is in imagining other places...and one such place is a beautiful, peaceful meadow. Turns out the power of their imagining is enough to teleport them there, along with the one nurse who cares about them (a black woman, who is also anxious to escape).  It's a rather desperate race for everyone to get out, as the kid who imagined the meadow has to teleport the others one at a time, and none of them are mobile (except the nurse, who is understandably worried about practicalities, and is able to assemble some supplies).

In the sun of the meadow, their bodies become magically stronger (not an all at once miracle cure, but still bona fide magical healing). But will this meadow, and the larger landscape, be a place that will sustain them?  There is a beautifully built building, with no clear purpose, that has lights but no electricity, and no road leading to it, and there are no other signs of people.

Yes, the children are happy, but there is an undercurrent of fear in the pastoral landscape-the strange shelter raises many questions, and there is constant anxiety about food....Should they set out to try to find other people (they are still too weak to walk far in a day), or stay put, risking starvation, and with a scary creature prowling outside at night....

I read it in a single quick siting, and almost liked it, especially the practical survival side of things which I would have liked more off. But I am too old and cynical for the ending, in which contact is made by the locals who are over the top harmonious and utopian. And disappointed that we never got to read anything past the first contact to see if there was anything of substance beneath the beautiful singing of passing bands of flying children etc.

And a bit let down actually that it turns out they'd time travelled to the future.  This is a case of "time travel as explanation for strange new place" and it's not my favorite subgenre unless the shock of cultural difference is explored in greater depth than it was here (this was the shallow end of the shallow end).

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Amy Shlitz

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, September 2025) is a beautiful, moving book that I loved!

It's the story of a girl, Tiph, who is in a snarled place in her life--friendless at her new school, overwhelmed by the demands place on her as big sister to her two baby halfsiblings, and with no particular sense of her own potential.  On a cold November day, she rescues a dog that has gotten loose from the old woman walking it, and then realizes the old woman needs her help too.  This starts a friendship that will change both her life and the old woman's.  It sets Tiph on a journey toward self-knowledge and contentment with the help of the old woman, who shares her love for doll houses and miniatures, and who is just as lonely as she is. But also there's help from a doll who's never been played with, who Tiph fell in love with through the glass of a shop window. 

The doll, Gretal, comes to life when no one is watching, and her point of view alternates with Tiph's.   She too is journeying--making her first friend with another doll, and then becoming Tiph's.  The fact that Tiph stole her from the shop doesn't matter to her, but it matters a lot to Tiph, who can't believe she has done such a wicked thing.  

The old woman has an empty dollhouse that her father, lost behind the Iron Curtain, made for her.  It arrived in America, where she and her mother escaped to, too late for her to care about it, but Tiph's entry into her life has made her want to bring it to life.  She has the means and the will to make it lovely, for Tiph, who she loves, and in doing so, finds that it holds a secret from her father that heals a wound in her spirit.

It was hard going for me in the middle when Tiph's snarled-ness is at its worst, but the lovely, moving, hug of an ending made it all worthwhile.  The family dynamics of Tiph's blended family, her impulsive shop lifting and recovery from that, which involved hard thinking and hard actions, and the way she makes her first friend at school, add grounded real-world content that balances the magical whimsy of the living dolls beautifully. Excellent doll house content as well. I would have loved it tons when I was making things for my own dollhouse, but also loved it tons as a grown-up!

Quick additional shoutout to the old lady's cat and dog, who are great characters in their own rights, who converse with the dolls and add comic relief! The cat, though, would of course hate being considered comic relief.

Cousins in the Time of Magic, by Emma Otheguy for this week's Timeslip Tuesday

Time worked in my favor of the first time in a while, so here's a Timeslip Tuesday book--Cousins in the Time of Magic, by Emma Otheguy (Feb 2025, Atheneum). Not only was it an exciting story, but I learned things I wasn't taught in school-I love it when that happens!

Jorge, Camila, and Siggy are cousins who are looked after by their Tia Zia...in a rather loose sense, because she's very scattered and has a lot on her mind. On the day the story begins, she has a diamond-encrusted sword to look after, which surprises the kids when they see it (which Tia Zia hadn't wanted them too). She also has a time portal in her backyard, which surprises the kids even more...and then they follow her through it, back to 1862, in a small boat. But their Tia is nowhere to be found. Instead, their boat attracts the attention of a Confederate war ship, and they take to the woods.

Camila always dreamed of having a magical adventure, like she'd read about in so many books, but the reality proves to be distinctly unpleasant. Lost in both time and space, and plunged into the Civil War, adventures seem over-rated. Fortunately, they meet a Cuban American boy looking for his father, a ballonist working for the Union. They join forces, narrowly missing capture by Confederates, and learning lots about the details of the war while rescuing their new friend's father. For instance, the French are about to invade Mexico...

Somehow the diamond sword has to be transported there, to be delivered to General Ignacio Zaragoza. The hydrogen balloon is their best chance, so off the three cousins go, landing in the middle of the town of Puebla just as the French are planning to attack. There they learn that Tia Zia is in Puebla as well, but finding her is complicated and dangerous as they witness first hand the Battle of Puebla that is the reason Mexico celebrates Cinco de Mayo....

Time travel here provides both adventure, education, and dangerous situations in a lovely mix! The characters of the three kids are distinct enough that each is taking in from their situation different things, which adds balance to the adventure part. Allies in the past, an enslaved boy in the Carolinas and an indigenous girl in Puebla, add cross cultural perspective and eye-opening time travel depth. And though there's a didactic element to the story, the learning goes down nice and easy and one is left with a greater understanding for and appreciation of the diverse Latine communities in American past and present. (As well as, in my case, learning about the Battle of Puebla for the first time, and how pivotal it was not just for Mexico, but for the US, which is a tad embarrassing....)

The Tinkerers, by Caroline Carlson, for Timeslip Tuesday

After another few horribly busy weeks, I have peaceful time for a time slip Tuesday review, and it is a good one--The Tinkerers, by Caroline Carlson (middle grade, Oct 7, 2025, Candlewick).  It is always a lovely thing to get a review copy of a new middle fantasy from a favorite author, and (if you are me) even more lovely to find it has time travel!

Peter's life in Stargazers Valley is one nestled in routines of helping his parents run their guesthouse, looking after/chasing after his younger siblings, drinking hot chocolate at the local cafe with his best friend Linnet, and looking up at the night sky lit up with Skeins of starstuff, beautiful and magical, telling the stories of the Spinner and the Weaver and the mischievous Jackanapes up in the stars to his little brother.  He's used to visitors, who are almost always there to climb the mountains or to investigate the starstuff that falls on them, and so when he meets a pair of older travelers on the road, pulling a cart heaped full of miscellany behind them, he is quick to direct them to the family's inn.  These tinkerers are researchers from the Imperial College, but they aren't like any Peter's ever met before, and they don't exactly become friendly with their colleagues already in residence....

There's a reason for this, carted along behind them on their way to the valley.  Starstuff can do magical, wonderous things, and so it is a tightly controlled substance that only a very few are allowed to manipulate and experiment with.  And no one is allowed by the Empress to make, say, a tinkered together device that can turn back time....When Peter figures out what the tinkerers have brought with them to the inn, he can't resist the temptation to fix small mistakes...no one notices, and life goes on, but better.  But then, when the biggest mistake of his life, made years ago, threatens his family, turning back time seems the only way out...

I started reading this (mostly) cozy fantasy back in May, but then life got messy, and I didn't want my enjoyment spoiled. So I started from the beginning again a few weeks ago, and did not in the least bit mind re-reading the first 200 pages. This is one for those who like fantasy with young protagonists who are realistically having concerns more germane to the young (which is why middle grade fantasy is better escapism than books for grown ups.) 

It is also for those who like stories that are rooted fast in a particular place (a very nice place in this case), and rooted in family and community, with likeable characters. It might seem too idyllic to swallow, but there are dark threads of a dangerously oppressive government woven into the story.  There are hints of this early, given in the way the story is told--mostly we are reading an account Peter is giving to the government, but sometimes we are reading notes from surveillance cameras, which is disquieting.  Possibly these dystopian threads could have been pulled at harder (Peter is not by nature one to instinctively fight against the status quo, unlike his friend Linnet, an artist who is furious her picture of the Empress as a many-headed monster is not given a green light), but the tension gives a spice to the story, and becomes important to the larger plot.

In any event, I am very grateful to Caroline Carlson for writing a book that is just right for me, and to Candlewick for realizing this and thoughtfully sending it my way.   I will probably buy my own hardcover and reread it every five years or so (now I've done the first read, it has become one I can read when stressed since I know what happens....).

Costumes for Time Travelers, by A.R. Capetta, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip Tuesday is a YA romance/adventure-Costumes for Time Travelers, by A.R. Capetta.  If you like your time travel full of bopping around to different times, with alternate timelines threatening all the characters hold dear, time tangled romance, and also are a fan of fashions of many eras, and the sewing thereof, this is the book for you!

Calisto has lived their life in Pocket, a peaceful island outside of the river of time.  It's a place where those who time travel visit to acquire what they need for their journeys--the boots that let them pass through the mists into different times, and the clothes they need to blend in with the locals.  Calisto works in their grandmother's shop, helping to make these costumes.  They don't time travel themselves, and they have no particular desire to.

Then Fawkes bursts into Pocket.  He doesn't time travel in planned journeys like everyone else, but bounces in constant motion from one time to the next, both past and future.  And when he sees Calisto, he recognizes them....though this is their first meeting.  Their meeting, however, is just a prelude to a dangerous adventure into the past.  There is a sinister cadre of dangerous men (fascists, Calisto's grandma calls them) who consider time travelers abominations, and who have given up their lives in ordinary time to hunt them down in the mists between times.  And there's another time traveler, whose twisted greed is shaking the stability of times past, and changing the future to come (in a bad way). 

Calisto and Fawkes are (for reasons that make good sense) the only ones in the right places and right times, with the right gifts, to make sure that they have the right time for a future together for themselves and all they hold dear.

I myself really really liked Pocket and the people living there (a diverse group from many times, with interesting backgrounds and professions) and would have enjoyed a simple cozy romance set there with time travel on the side.  I also really liked the crafty bits about making clothes.  I was disappointed when Calisto and Fawkes set out on their adventures (and things got a lot less cozy) but their visits to past and future, and the foiling of the bad guys, were good reading too.  

Unfortunately, the big heavy hitting ideas skittering on the edges of the story never quite emerged fully enough to add heart-ripping gravitas to the adventures, and the bad guy trouncing of the ending was lacking in tension or heart-pulling emotion. It remained for me a bouncy adventure, and not much more.

The Island of Forgotten Gods, by Victor Piñero

The Island of Forgotten Gods, by Victor Piñero (middle grade fantasy, August 5, 2025, Sourcebooks Young Readers) is 

--a summer holiday story in which three cousins visit their grandma in Puerto Rico, and have wild adventures while dealing with the emotional fallout from parental troubles back home

--a story of an ordinary kid swept into a mythological heritage he had no idea existed

--a (fictionalized) story of Indigenous survival in the face of colonial oppression

 --a love letter to Puerto Rico that opens the reader's eyes to its beauties and its struggles, seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy, young enough to feel that it is paradise, but old enough to start seeing the cracks....

and all of these are tied together beautifully!

Nico loves Puerto Rico, and his abuela....but this summer things are off for him.  His parents are sending him alone, and he's worried that the tensions in their marriage are getting worse, and he's unhappy that he his dream of being a famous film director has hit a roadblock, with his high school hopes for a place at the best New York high school for film dashed.  Puerto Rico isn't quite the dream like place he remembered it being--it's a place struggling to recover from disasters (the zika epidemic of 2026, followed by Hurricane Maria) and it feels almost like there's a curse on the place.

But still, it's Puerto Rico, a place he loves, and his two cousins, sisters who are both guaranteed to make things interesting in their own distinct ways, are there for company.   Then things become even more interesting, when they encounter a monstrous shadowy creature that seems to them to be the mythical Chupacabra.  It seems to be following them....and more interesting still (not in a good way), they are then stalked by a shadowy men who seem to wish them harm. The summer vacation is turning into a nightmare....

Nico is inspired to make a documentary that will him with his high school dream, and the Chupacabra mystery seems like a sure-fire winner.  But though this project gives purposes to the days, it becomes ever clearer that there's a bigger, more dangerous and more magical story than he could ever have imagined unfolding,  It's tied to the deep history of the island, and the Tainos, its original people, supposedly lost to European colonization, but still there, still holding onto their culture in secret in this version of reality.

The fate of the island hangs in the balance, and Nico and his cousins find themselves confronting mythology made real as they race to discover what role they can play in saving it.

It's a fast paced and gripping read.  There's enough mythology and magic to make it work for fantasy fans (and I was happy to read a story in which the main character does not himself have magical powers, but instead uses his camera skills to help save the day).  The setting is great; it will bring Puerto Rico alive for kids in the US states who haven't ever given it much thought.  (I now hope to visit someday and will reread this when that time comes!).  The mundane worries about divorce and worries about achieve high school dreams ground the story nicely, and it's great to see Nico's documentary turn from clickbait folklore to a deeper, more thoughtful project about the depressed state of the island, and it's an example of kids doing something to make real world change for the better that will doubtless resonate with many readers!

In short, highly recommend.

Personal connection-- I spend 4th to 6th grade at Saint Andrews School in the Bahamas (I was a foreign service kid), and we were divided, UK style, into four Houses named after Indigenous peoples of the Carribean--Lucayan, Carib, Arawak, and Taino, none of which we were actually taught anything about.  I was a Taino, so happy to meet them in the pages of this book!

disclaimer--review copy received from the publisher

Future Me Saves the World (and Ruins My Life) by Leah Cypess for Timeslip Tuesday

Future Me Saves the World (and Ruins My Life) by Leah Cypess, illustrated by Wes Molebash (middle grade, Aladdin 2025) is this week's time travel book.  It's squarely aimed at the younger middle grade reader with a generous font and funny illustrations, and although it was not to my personal taste, I can see this target audience enjoying it lots and lots!

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.

Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, for Timeslip Tuesday

I started writing this review for a Timeslip Tuesday weeks ago, but it has been a hard month.  I'm glad I came back to it though!

Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai (YA, Zephyr March 2023), is a wild ride through time, though there's no traditional time travel.  The titular catfish is the giant that swims beneath the land, and its thrashing is what causes earthquakes.  And then, at the beginning of this story, it causes a time quake as well.

Sora is 11 when this quake strikes, fracturing the country into different time zones--some where time runs fast, some where it runs slow, but most still where it runs normally.  Her Japanese mother was lost somewhere in this confusion of shaking time and space, and she is determined to find her, travelling in and out of slow (where everything is perfectly preserved) and fast (where all human made things have decayed) times, all of which are haunted...Her father, a white American, also travels through the different zones, but this is his job as a scientist.  The two of them, throwing themselves at the mystery that broke their lives, are barely holding it together in the real world of ordinary time.  And the time travel seems to be taking a strange toll on her father's health....

It is a fascinating experience to travel the time zones with Sora, who on top of her grief and the strangeness surrounding her home in ordinary time feels isolated by being neither Japanese or American enough...so for much of the book, the main feeling is troubling adriftness...

The last third or so of the book picks up the pace markedly--Sora leaves her home town, partly to visit her one close friend and almost boyfriend who's gone off to college, but mostly to talk to a professor who might help her understand the time phenomena better.  The professors prize student, a girl Sora's age, becomes a friend, and then more than a friend, giving Sora a vibrant link to reality that she badly needed.  

But even more than this nice romantic element, the story starts to sing with lovely touches of the fantastical and mythological spilling out from beyond reality, and Sora and her new friend must head off on a quest deeper into time strangenesses than she has ever travelled, looking for answers that might save herself and her father, and maybe even give her the peace of accepting that her mother has gone beyond finding. And maybe even to the Catfish itself...

So in many ways it's a lovely and interesting book, and the romance is very sweet.  But it wasn't quite as lovely to read as I'd hoped.  For one thing, Sora is so consumed by her search for her missing mother that she seems very one dimensional. The fact that is told in close 1st person means that we don't see the parts of her that other characters see and appreciate, just her own rather circular thoughts and feelings, which include a lot of negativity about herself.  So it is hard not to feel negative about her, since that is what the reader must experience.

I also would have liked the mythological, magical elements to come in even sooner and stronger than they did, but that's just a personal preference.

And finally, the time zones are confusing as heck, impossible to explain, and full of unanswered questions about how they work and what is happening to living things within the different time zones. For instance, it seems like a bad idea for kids to go into fast zones to cram for tests, because they are aging while they are there, and presumably shortening their lifespans in the real time.  There are far too many questions of this sort for the author to address, and wisely, she doesn't try even as she sends her main character out looking for answers.  So one has to just relax and let it happen, which might not be everyone's cup of tea.  It sure does leave the reader with a lot to ponder though, and that's one of the best gifts a book can give you.

Sandy and the Hollow Book, by Meta Mayne Reid, for Timeslip Tuesday

Sandy and the Hollow Book, by Meta Mayne Reid, is the sequel to The McNeils at Rathcapple, and if you haven't read that one then you will find this one confusing.....The first book introduces Sandy and Richard as they move the family manor in rural Ireland, inhabited by an unwelcoming elderly uncle and his vast collection of books (he is researching local history). The two kids get to learn local history in a different way, through time travel, which comes in handy when they take part in the local pageant organized by the lady of the local castle.

So here in the sequel, I was expecting both more pageant and more time travel.  The pageant part proved to be much more important.  The main driver of the story is that the lady of the castle feels too old and tired to take it on again, and the kids and their friends set to work to make it happen.  The uncle has no patience for theatrical liberties taken with the past, so Sandy sneaks into his library to try to ferret out fresh content...and finds a hollowed-out book, in which is a small collection of random things--like bits of vegetation, a rock, a button....and some torn out quotations from Virgil (sic).

These small things, plus a visit from the magical Angus, the horseriding Spirit of Place who was a big part of book one, send the kids and friends back to the Irish famine, where they inhabit, variously, the wealthy who have food and the poor who don't and come back a lot more famine aware.  Good pageant content, bad time travel--they aren't themselves in the past, and after a while they don't even remember being there.  Time travel tourism at its worst, if you ask me.

Small adventures and happenings occur, including a rather nicely done mountain injury and an interesting mystery from the more recent past being solved,  and the pageant is a success.  The things in the box have only one more very minor bit to play, that doesn't involve time travel, and I was left feeling a tad disappointed (thought the Vergil quotes turned out to be interesting, which I appreciated).

In short, enjoyable as a story, but a time travel let down. Worth picking up if you, like me, are a fan of vintage childrens books set in Ireland and see it going for a reasonable price (especially since you may be able to resell it for a higher one....) and a must have if you are writing an essay on historical pageants in 20th-century literature for the young (which I am not).

The Secret of Lillian Velvet, by Jaclyn Moriarty, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Secret of Lillian Velvet, by Jaclyn Moriarty (2023), is the fifth book of the very excellent Kingdoms and Empires series, which begins with The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone.  Last week I went nosing around in my tbr shelves (I have a problem) for a book I knew I would really really like reading, and this was the one I found (and it did work beautifully!).  And happily for me, it turned out to have a timeslip element to it, so this Tuesday was sorted!  It's not a particular spoiler, as the time slipping is a feature of the story and not the main plot point....

The main plot point is, as the title suggests, the secret of a young girl, Lillian Velvet, growing up with a horrible controlling and unloving grandmother in Australia.  Her life is lived inside the house and its small fenced in garden, doing school work and household tasks under grandmother's gimlet eye.  But then, much to her surprise, her grandmother gives her a jar of gold tokens as a birthday gift.  And a mysterious stranger takes them in exchange for visits to another world (which the reader of the previous books quickly recognizes as the Kingdoms and Empires).

There she finds herself, in each of her visits, confronted with someone who needs her help, which she freely gives to the best of her ability.  Again the reader of the previous books will recognize many of these people....except that their ages are wrong. This is the time slip part--she is visiting different time periods, which adds complexity to experience and leads to some twists and turns that are important to how the whole ensemble comes together.  But larger story aside, each small adventure is zesty in its way, especially when you get to meet old friends.

And meanwhile, the family of Bronte Mettlestone is gathering for a reunion with Bronte's missing grandparents, now returned.  But it seems it's not actually safe for them, after all....and it's up to Lillian Velvet, and the secret that she herself only learns toward the end of the book, to save them from malevolent magic.  I am not saying what the secret is.

This series is so much fun, with many delightful characters, magical twists, and extraordinary settings.  In this book, there's also the pleasure of seeing poor Lillian Velvet's cruelly constricted world widening as she makes friends with the Mettelstones, and getting the happy end she deserves.  I liked it so much that I think I really need to go out and buy all the earlier books, so I can have the pleasure of reading them all again at my leisure....and there is just enough room on my shelves for them, and room even for more new books in the series which I hope happens.

The Village Beyond the Mist, by Sachiko Kashiwaba

The Village Beyond the Mist, by Sachiko Kashiwaba, is I think the most purely magical book I've read so far this year.  It is unapologetically exuberant in its lovely fantastical-ness.  It's also the inspiration for the Studio Ghibli movie, Spirited Away, although the story is quite different. First published in Japan in 1975, it's now been translated for English readers (May 27, 2025 from Restless Books), and I have now read it twice in three months, and I bet if I had been given it in 1975, when I was 8, my copy would now be in tatters....

Instead of going to her grandmother's for the summer as usual, Lena is being sent instead to a remote village she's never heard of.  When her train reaches the end of the line, she finds no one to meet her, and no one to help her get up the mountain to where it might (or might not) be.... Perturbed but undaunted, she sets off, and even when a strange mist envelopes her, she keeps going.

On the other side of the mist is a very small and very strange village.  In the middle of a forest is a cobbled street, with six buildings. One is a guest house, where a room is waiting for Lena. It's a lovely room, but there's a price-the rather fierce woman who runs it demands that Lena work for her room and board.  And so the book spools through Lena's time helping out at five magical shops in the village, each of which comes with its own challenges and wonders, and quirky characters.  

There is no other plot, and so it is bit episodic (readers looking for forward momentum toward plot points will not care for it as much as those looking for a dreamlike escape from reality with lovely pictures in their minds eye.  This would be me--I liked it more the second time, as the first time I had no guarantee that the magical peace of the village was safe from peace-destroying disaster).  But the episodic aspect of the story would, I think, make it a wonderful read aloud, and Lena is such a clearly drawn character, learning and appreciating and helping in each place she works, that it is a coherent story, progressing smoothly from beginning to end.

In short, it is great, warm-hearted fun for the right reader! (which would be me, and not just child-me-- I'm hanging on to the ARC I got from the publisher, in case I need a nice magical break from grown-up real world problems....)

Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry, for Timeslip Tuesday

Moon Window, by Jane Louise Curry (1996), was supposed to be my time travel Tuesday book two weeks ago, but life got in the way....so here's just a quick look at it, enough so that I can add it to my master list of time travel books.

Jo Ellen and her mother were everything to each other, until her mother falls in love, and Jo is confronted with the horrible fact that she will now have a stepfather.  In order to facilitate the honeymoon, Jo ends up being sent off to stay with an elderly cousin, Granty, who lives in a fabulous replica of a Scottish castle in the middle of nowhere, with a strange "moon window" up in the attic...  And although Jo's determined to wreck the honeymoon by running away, she's fascinated by the place in spite of herself.

Even more so, when she finds herself slipping back in time through the moon window.

Not only does she meet the little girl who will become Granty, she starts to learn that there is a dark story behind the grand estate....the story of "Witch Ellen," the Scottish woman who had the castle built, who is very much still a force to be reckoned with, and not in a good way.

Time travel and secrets reveled in the present bring the mystery to a terrible climax, that ties up loose threads the reader didn't even know where waiting to be tied.

It was a mixed bag for me.  I thought Jo was a brat, but also thought her mother was a brat too; for instance, moving them into her new husband's place and not taking old familiar furnishings that Jo loved with them.  I like big old houses in stories, and this one had some nice details, but it was strangely static and never became quite real.  This actually fits with the plot beautifully, but was disappointing for me.

I did enjoy the time travel; there's a nice sense of strangeness to the first trips especially, and a nice ratcheting up of time travel tension as things progress.  But though it added to the story, and the characterization of both Jo and Granty, I can't remember that it actually functioned much with regards to the larger plot point of the malevolent magic at the heart of the story.

In short, though I was quite happy to be reading it, and interested enough in what was happening that the pages turned quickly, I'll probably never read it again.  But I bet I would have if I'd been given a copy as a 9 year old.

The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Rise of Issa Igwe, by Shanna Miles (October 2024, Union Square Kids, middle grade), combines time travel with another favorite subgenre of mine, the magical boarding school. and I enjoyed it lots!

Issa did not want to go to the Siren School.  She wanted to travel with her parents.  But her magical gift of being a conduit for the dead was out of control, and her parents felt she needed a structured education.  So off to boarding school it was.  

The school isn't awful.  There's the chance to make friends for the first time, lots of magic to learn, and a beautiful campus...but before Issa can change her mind about not wanting to be there, tragedy strikes, and her parents are killed driving away from the drop-off.  

Issa knows that one of the classes taught at the Siren School is horology...the magic of bending time.  And if time can be bent, maybe the past can be undone, and she can save her parents.  So along with all the nice school stuff--friends and magical animals and such--she's driven to learn more magic as quickly as possible. 

The school might offer great classes, but it also offers nightmares, hinted at by its past of plantation slavery, its disturbing headmistress, and warnings to the current students about the Night Children.  And the more she sees of her new school, the more Issa is distracted from her personal goal by the growing realization of the horror at the heart of the school.  A horror that plans to add her to the graves of many other past students.....

In short, it's a fun story of a plucky smart girl vs ancient evil, with interesting twists, including the time slipping at the end.  Middle grade fans of magical schools should eat it up, fans of horror, though, might be a bit let down, as I was, by the horror turning out to be relatively straightforward and not as deliciously creepy as the Night Children made it sound.  It's also not one for pure time travel fans--the time travel bit was there to drive Issa's story and not a point in its own right, and it ended up happening in a way that didn't feel quite earned.

That being said, the mix of it all made for good reading, and the successful confrontation with the evil at the school's heart was beautifully earned by Issa's stubbornness and strength of character, with the help of friends, the ancestors and their magic, a mysteriously haunting boy, and two sweet cats!

Storm at the Edge of Time, by Pamela F. Service, for Timeslip Tuesday

Storm at the Edge of Time, by Pamela F. Service (1994), is the first book by this late 20th/early 21st century author of children's fantasy/sci fi that I've read.   Her first book, Winter of Magic's Return, was published in 1985, when I was in college and not reading much for pleasure...And then the 1990s were a difficult time reading-wise for me--I would go to libraries and bookstores and not find anything that looked good.  It was so wonderful when the internet happened, and my tbr pile never looked back.  But in any event, this evening I finished reading Storm at the Edge of Time.

Three young teenagers, Arni (a Viking), Jamie (a contemporary American girl), and Tyaak (a half alien from the far future) are all on Orkney in their different times when they are pulled back to the ancient past by a magician desperately trying to save the universe from destruction.  The magician spent most of his own power 6000 years ago in the past, and the three staffs that were once joined in a single tree of protective power were scattered.  The three kids are descendants of the magician, and have inherited some of his power, and so they are pitted against the forces of darkness, desperately search for the staffs in their own time periods.  

They are not a natural team, they have no idea what they are doing, they are time travelling (1 person in their own time, the other 2 not), and powerful agents of darkness, who do know what they are doing magic-wise, are trying to get the staffs themselves.  Unfortunately, the book is too short to do justice of all of this, and the Three Time Travel adventures ended up feeling sort of skittery and surface level, with the occasional elements of good description and emotional depth making the reader (me) want the whole thing to be more...

The part that I actually enjoyed best was the bit where Jamie is introduced--dragged to Orkney by birdwatching parents, she's annoyed and isolated, and desperate to see a ghost so that she can have something that is special about her....This very introspective, character focused section is a sharp contrast to the adventures in time.  The two boys each get their own introductory bit too, but these are short and don't quite make their characters three dimensional, especially that of the half alien from the future, who is just an unpleasant grump for most of the book.  

All this being said, I didn't mind reading the book at all, though I do wish it had pushed a bit more past the adventures into the characters.  And I will certainly pick up Pamela Service's New Magic series and stand alone books if they come my way, though probably not her Alien Agent and Way-To-Real Aliens books....

Witchwood, by Kalyn Josephson

 

Witchwood, by Kalyn Josephson (October 2024, Delacorte Press), is the third in the Ravenfall series, middle grade fantasy about a magical hotel on the boarder of our world and the realm of magic.  I very much enjoyed the first two books, Ravenfall and Hollowthorn, so it was a great treat for me to return to this world (and I am wondering what took me so long....).

Anna is the youngest child of the family who tend to Ravenfall, a magical, sentient being in its own right. And soon she will be the only one--her older sisters are headed off to college.  But at least Colin, whose story of magic and murder and growing powers as a Raven (one who keeps magical creatures that are dangerous to ordinary people in check) was integral to the first too books, has come back to visit.  And she's thrilled when the two of them get to set off on a Raven mission of their own  

But it turns out not to be the straightforward, relatively safe mission her parents agreed on. And when there's a strange attack on them, that they can't explain, they are forced to seek out Anna's aunt in the town of Witchwood, a magical community they've never visited before.  There they find the same attacks have been happening in this town where almost everyone is a witch; people have been disappearing, and no one knows just how or why.

Finding out that she herself is a witch, getting to know her aunt and the Jewish heritage of this side of the family, and wondering why her cousin is so hostile is a lot, but Anna and Colin are also determined to solve the mystery of the disappearances.  And in doing so, they are faced with ethical questions that make figuring out what to do even harder.  Should ordinary people be protected against magic, or should magical creatures and practitioners be protected against ordinary people?   

And will they be able to survive the incredibly powerful woman who will stop at nothing to make sure she is so powerful that no one can stand against her, who wants to harness Anna's own powers for her cause?  

There are lots of the lovely magical details that I enjoyed so much in the earlier books, and a climactic adventure of epic proportions in a legendary realm, linked to Jewish mythology, of incredible danger.  The questions of identity and ethical responsibility add depth, making the book thought provoking as well as exciting fun.  (My one personal quibble is that I love the Ravenfall house so much I wanted to spend more time there, even though the village of Witchwood was interesting too....)

I love how each book is its own complete story, but that doesn't stop me from looking forward to the next book lots!

 

The Isle of Ever (Isle of Ever, #1), by Jen Calonita, for this week's Timeslip Tuesday

The past month has been a heard one for me, leaving no time for blogging, but I'm back with The Isle of Ever (Isle of Ever, #1), by Jen Calonita, for Timeslip Tuesday! The Isle of Ever is the sort of book that makes me glad I didn't start "Time Travel" Tuesday, because there isn't any time travel of the ordinary sort happening here.  But time is very slippy indeed.  

This isn't a spoiler--the book begins with a 19th century Long Island girl, Evelyn, visiting an island that doesn't show up on any maps, and that only she and a few other kids are aware of.  On the island she meets a 17th century pirate, so clearly the island is not obeying the ordinary rules of permanent temporal and spatial placement!  

Then we cut to Everly, known as Benny, an ordinary girl, living in ordinary modern times, whose world with her single mom is one of constant moving and financial anxiety.  Her life is upended when she finds she's inherited a fortune and a Long Island estate from her many times great-grandmother, the Evelyn of the 19th century.  But to claim her inheritance, she has to solve the clues Evelyn has left that will lead her, if she succeeds, to the island that doesn't exist.  

And so, alongside two new friends, Benny races against time from one clue to the next, desperate to figure out the island's secrets....not the least of which is the slippy-ness of its place in time.

The inheritance part is great wish-fulfilment for all of us readers who long for such a legacy! Benny's new estate is all a young reader could ask for.  And the making of friends is also wish-fulfilment for lonely Benny.  The mystery is intriguing with plenty of nice twists along the way (include a rare Blood Orange Moon, a deadly yellow fever epidemic, and unexpected family connections and betrayals. The hunt is interspersed with Evelyn's diary entries, which both help Benny along the way, and deepen the wonderous, terrible, magic of the island. It's great middle grade reading (and gripping for adult readers too!).  

My only disappointment was with the ending, which is in fact another beginning.  It will be a long wait for book two!

Thunderbird, Book Three, by Sonia Nimr, for Timeslip Tuesday

Thunderbird, Book Three, by Sonia Nimr (September 10, 2024 by Ctr for Middle Eastern Studies UT-Austin), is the final book in the story of a Palestinian girl, Noor, who must travel back in time to find the feathers of the Thunderbird in order to save our present-day world from monsters.

I really loved the first book. In my review I said "I completely agree with the conclusion of the Kirkus review (which is how I found out about this one)--"This richly descriptive novel paints a moving portrait of a lost, lonely girl; a historic land with a painful past and present; and an enchanting magical world. The cliffhanger ending will leave readers eager for more."

And I enjoyed the second even more. From my review--"It is a lovely mix of the magical (the boundaries between our world and the supernatural world are starting to slip....) and the historical; very satisfying both as middle grade time travel and as plucky girl adventure! It's a fairly short, tightly written book, with humor alongside of tension and heartfelt emotion, and it's a vivid portrayal of this particular moment in time. Of course "let's save the precious library!" is a plot I am always there for, and fortunately I wasn't kept in too much desperate tension...."

This time she is plunged back to Byzantine Jerusalem in 638 CE, just as Omar ibn al-Kahttab is about to conquer what was then a Christian city.  As was the case with the first two books, she starts her quest for the feather by finding allies--this time a brother and sister with a magical gift for healing.  But rather than an exploration of this part of Jerusalem's history, with real world obstacles such as are to be expected in perilous times, to be overcome, the book turns into an other world fantasy adventure .

Noor and her new friends are captured by monstrous devouring worm creatures, and escape from them to find themselves in a world of gentle telepaths.  This world is under genocidal attack from monstrous, devouring invaders, and it is up to Noor and her new friends, with help from her companion Sabeeka, a djinn who takes the form of a cat, to lead these people in fighting back for the sake of their future.  Once this is successfully accomplished (and if you like fantasy battles you'll find this good reading--lots if ingenuity, unlikely allies, and fantastical creatures), it's back to Jerusalem where the finding the Thunderbird features feels like an anticlimax.

This third book in the series didn't work for me. I was not expecting a fantasy adventure that explicitly underlined a parallel to Palestine vs Isreal, with the Israelis irredeemably monstrous.  Even if this had not been the case, I would have been disappointed not get the cross-cultural, historically rich, time travel experience I'd hoped for.  Additionally, Noor's story began with real world sadness and trauma, and I would have liked this emotional arc to be more fully resolved.

Time Spinner, by Roy Apps, for Timeslip Tuesday

Time Spinner, by Roy Apps (1990), is a fun one for younger readers (8-10 year olds).  Rosemary is a kid living out in the far reaches of the solar system about 100 years from now.  It's a clean, safe, sanitized existence, and with no other kids her age around, and nothing much to occupy her time (homework doesn't count) she is bored our of her mine.  The one thing she finds interesting is when her Gran shows her the illicit treasures from the Elizabethan Age of Earth (meaning Elizabeth II, not I) that she keeps hidden.  But when her parents come home unexpectedly to find Rosemary holding a glass bottle, disaster happens--she drops it and it breaks.  And then to make things worth, her parents destroy everything else in the secret stash, even the picture of Rosemary's great-grandmother--unsanitary relics are forbidden.

So Rosemary decides to break an even more stringent rule.  She's allowed to take the family space travel vehicle out for short spins, but definitely not allowed to use its time travel feature.  But she has to get another picture of her gran, and maybe another wonderful glass bottle as well....so she sets off for an English school in the late 20th century.

She is in for a ton of culture shock, and this makes for entertaining reading!  Fortunately she meets a friendly boy, who does his best to keep her out of trouble, and despite many missteps and culture shocks, she has the time of her life, making it home safely with a bottle, though not the picture.....It's a really solid portrayal of modern life seen through the eyes of a kid from a sterile space existence future, and tasted through her mouth that has never eaten plant or animal (all her other senses are in for rude awakenings of their own--I think this is perhaps the most sensory time travel book I've ever read.....)

I gave it four stars over on Goodreads primarily because it's a great one for the target audience, who will find it very entertaining. It didn't have quite enough heft to it for non-target audience me to really love it (it's only 117 pages of generous font), but I found it a fun fast read.