Your Life Has Been Delayed, by Michelle I. Mason, for Timeslip Tuesday

Your Life Has Been Delayed, by Michelle I. Mason (September 2021, Bloomsbury YA), is a really entertaining and thought-provoking YA time travel book.

Jenny gets on a plane in 1995, on her way home from visiting New York city, where her grandparents live and where she wants to go to college. But when her plane lands, it's the year 2020* and her family and friends have mourned for her for 25 years. All but one grandmother grew old and died, her little brother is grown-up with a family of her own, and so is her best friend.

Now she must struggle not just with the unfamiliar technology of her new life, but with trying to fit again into a family that has grown older.  And the heart-breaking horror of her best friend (one of those really really close best friends) being forty years old, married with kids.  It is a struggle, but Jenny faces the challenges bravely, and starts school again like she's supposed to, shepherded by her best friends teenaged son (who is very cute....)

Outside of her personal struggle to find a place in her new present, there's a firestorm of media attention, conspiracy theories, intrusions into her personal life, including from governmental agencies.  It's all pretty toxic, and her parents, well-meaning but I think misguided, try to control her access to media (almost like they're still trying to keep her back in the 1990s....).  She does come across as pretty naïve, and young for 17 (possibly because her parents were overprotective back then), and I think more could have been made of her now falling into the company of  Zoomers, who are perhaps the least naïve generation ever.  The other high school kids are fairly generic "high school kids."

There's romance (how weird it is, though, to date your best friend's son...) and high school drama, and real danger from the world of the conspiracy theorists....what I liked best was the whole having to cope with a different time/technology/people.

It's an utterly fascinating premise, both fun and poignant, and though I thought the book could have been a little tighter, I enjoyed it lots.  

*the writing of the book predated the pandemic, and the author decided to leave it out.

The Longest Night of Charlie Moon, by Christopher Edge, for Timeslip Tuesday

 The Longest Night of Charlie Moon, by Christopher Edge, is a surreal little gem of a middle grade timeslip story that enticed me, confused the heck out of me (not in a bad way though), and then made me cry at the end.  

The enticing part was the forest, where Charlie's friend Dizzy led her one day to see the strange patterns of sticks he'd seen there.  Charlie has recently moved from London, and so the woods are a new thing, and Dizzy, who has a limp leftover from polio (the first clue to the time period), and who is, along with new kid Charlie, on the sidelines of the games played by the other kids, seems to be a good guide.   

But the class bully, Johnny, follows them there to scare them by pretending to be Old Chrony, the wild man rumored to live there.  Scare them Johnny does, but then when the kids realize they are lost, the fear of the dark woods grows more and more palpable.  There seems to be no way out, and though the three kids start to work together as a team, they can't figure out how to get home.

And thing grow more scary still, and more confusing.  Reality shifts, and twists, and the dangerous visions that rise up in the night might or might not be real.  And on top of that, Old Chrony turns out to be real...and very powerful indeed.

At which point the reader gets confirmation that time has been slipping, and that for kids in England in 1933, the future isn't going to be a safe and comforting place.  Which leads to me crying at the end.* 

It also lead to me forgiving the story for ever confusing me.  It all makes sense in retrospect, and I want my own copy now so I can reread it in a year or too. It's not a book for readers who want things explained, or for there to be Reasons and all the backstory to be spelled out.  But it is a book for young (or not so young) readers who want to journey into a terrifying wood beyond the boundaries of what is real, where time slips, and the only way out is through.

personal note--the reader doesn't find out for a while that Charlie is a girl, which I think was a bit of a distraction; it felt a little like a trick trying to be clever, and it throws one out of the story to have a gender switch in the middle of things.  

further note on Charlie--she's a good character for girls who like to code and decipher things to read about!

final note on Charlie--I always hated that nickname for Charlotte, so if you ever meet me in real life, please don't use it!

note on Johnny--though he's a bully, he's not a terrible one, and it's believable that he's able to work with the other kids as things progress.  

note on the time travel side of things--this is one in which time slips, and the future is glossed over the present; there's no actual travel to different times.

* the thing that made me cry is a spoiler! turn back now!

I wasn't expecting Dunkirk, and Dunkirk makes me sob every single darn time.

Steps Out of Time, by Eric Houghton, for Timeslip Tuesday

Steps Out of Time, by Eric Houghton (1979), is a rather nice time slip story I picked up in a used bookstore last month for $12, on the grounds that it looked old and I'd never heard of it...and I tend to like books with houses on the cover.  I am satisfied that I got my money's worth and can even say that I might well re-read it in future.

Jonathan and his father have just moved into a house of their own in a small English town (Jonathan's mother is dead).  The house needs lots of work to make it into a comfortable home, but both of them are optimistic about it.  Jonathan, shy and kind of social awkward, is a lot less optimistic about being the new kid as school, and indeed, quickly finds himself the butt of unkind jokes.  

Walking home from school, he takes comfort from the thick mist that gathers along the river at twilight... but then, walking through it back to his home, he opens the door to find a strange house, with strangers living in it.  He tries to believe it's just a confusion from the mist, but it happens again, and he's forced to accept that sometimes he walks into a different reality.  The oddest thing is that in that reality he is a boy named Peter, with Peter's words flowing naturally out of this mouth, and Peter's body doing things Jonathan couldn't do--rowing and climbing and drawing and painting brilliantly.  Lots of things are different in this reality--landmarks in the town have changed, and there is strange technology.  It is, in fact, the future.

Jonathan's time spent living as Peter, with Peter's family, especially his sister Helen, changes Jonathan; even back in his own body he retains some of Peter's muscle memory, and his art wins him the admiration of his peers and becomes a bridge leading to group acceptance.  And whatever magic drew him into Peter's time comes to an end.  There are lots of bits I liked about Jonathan figuring out he can draw and paint--full of good detail about shading and perspective and light, etc.  

If this sounds like a somewhat slight plot, that's because it is.  But it is very atmospheric and fascinating. I ended the book thinking the author was not very good at future tech, and indeed those bits of the book were often awkward reading, but then I did the math.  I was about the same age as Jonathan in 1979, and it is now about the same age as the fictional future time.  I wouldn't have had any trouble with the portrayal of the future if I'd read the book when it first came out, so it's not a fair criticism!  

One place where I am still very sure the author faltered is with regards to Peter's mother in the future.  Jonathan has lost his own mother, and is periodically embodied as another boy with a loving mother--this should have elicited strong and poignant emotion, but didn't.  A lost opportunity, which weakened the book.

But in any event, I think I would have loved it as a child* --and even as an adult, I find myself replaying it in my mind's eye, seeing the images from the story vividly, and filling in emotional weight that isn't in the original.  I was impressed enough by the book to see what else Eric Houghton wrote, and am   disappointed that most of his books seem to be for younger children than me (or about Sparticus).  I have added Gates of Glass to my tbr list, though.

*every summer my sisters and I went back to the United States to stay with our grandparents, and I tried to read all the books in the children's section of the Arlington VA Central Library.  Some summers I started at A. others at Z, but never in the middle, and so 1970s authors from about H to N are often new to me.

The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams, by Mindy Thompson

Yay me! I have a Timeslip Tuesday post! I also have a house that is slowly becoming habitable after a home renovation project, which involved moving the washer/dryer from a small back room to the pantry, freeing up the whole ex-laundry room for books. The floor of this room has now been varnished, the walls (mostly) painted, and bookshelves are back in place. The books in this room are all stock for my retirement plan (a new and used children's bookstore), though there are shelves of stock in many other rooms and in all the closets too, and on the top shelves in the kitchen that are too high for me to reach. So basically I am living in a used bookstore, a bookstore of dust (thanks to the floor sanding) and dreams, just like the title of today's book--The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams, by Mindy Thompson (middle grade, Oct 21, 2021, Viking Books)

Poppy also lives in a bookstore, named Rhyme and Reason. It is the heart of her world. It is also magical--its doors open to any place and time where there is someone who needs the respite a bookstore can offer. The year of the story is 1944, the place is Sutton, New York, and young men are starting to return from war. Poppy's big brother, Al, didn't go to war because of his asthma, but his best friend Carl did. When Carl is killed, Al is crushed not just by grief but by a huge sense of wrongness....and becomes determiend to use the bookstore's time travelling magic to save his friend, even though this is utterly forbidden by the Council that governs the world's magical bookstores.

When Al starts pushing the magic towards his goal, it has dark and dire consequences. The bookstore magic is a beacon of light against a terrible darkness, but now the darkness starts to find a way in. Things go wrong in the shop, and Poppy's father becomes very ill. Al isn't interested in the store anymore, and Poppy is basically the only person keeping it going. As Al becomes almost entirely a creature of darkness, Poppy struggles to pull him back from the abyss before it is too late...not just for her brother, but for the magical bookstores.

And she does set things right, with the help of two friends she makes in the magical bookstore world during this crisis, and with a time travelling trip of her own to a battlefield in Europe, the one in which Carl is killed. But it is a bittersweet ending....

The bookstore is of course a wonderful setting for a story, and the stress and anxiety Poppy goes through makes the story gripping (especially for those of us who like stories of kids desperately trying to keep the family business going, a niche subgenre I am fond of)! Lonely kids will relate, kids with older siblings going down dark roads will have the heartstrings pulled hard, as will kids who are forced to take on the work of grownups before they are ready for it. That being said, the playful magic of the bookstore never quite becomes overshadowed by the threat of the Darkness, although it came close (I found the threat of the darkness the least interesting part of the book, actually; existential magical threats aren't as interesting to me as small details of daily life).  

(I'm a bit surprised by the bit I remember most clearly--two characters from different time periods both like to sit in the same chair, and get into fierce arguments about it. Finally, Poppy gets fed up with their bickering, and instead of just getting annoyed as she usually does, she asks each of them why that particular chair, and when she knows their reasons, she's able to solve the conflict for good. A useful little life lesson that I appreciated!)

short answer--give this to any 9-11 year old  who loves bookstores and/or time travel!

Welcome to Dweeb Club, by Betsy Uhrig, for Timeslip Tuesday

Trying to change the past is often the goal of time travelers, whether it's killing Hitler, or making sure to be in the right place at the right time to meet the right person. Betsy Uhrig has come up with a fresh twist to this type of story in Welcome To Dweeb Club, (September 2021, Margaret K. McElderry Books) that's a fun story of a bunch of 7th graders who find themselves the ones being visited by the future....

At the start of seventh grade, Jason and his friend Steve are confronted with bewildering fair of clubs they could join.  Amongst the panoply and promotion is one odd club, H.A.I.R. There's no description, nothing to try to make it alluring; there's just a piece of paper on which no one has signed their name.  Jason and Steve seize the chance to be founding members....and when other kids see Glamorous Steve, as he's known, signing up, they do to.

So H.A.I.R. ends up with with 8 seventh graders, who are surprised to learn that the club will be in charge of monitoring the school's ritzy new security cameras (donated with the stipulation that H.A.I.R be created for this purpose).  The kids are a mixed lot, but all are eager to mess with their new tech, and they are given a tiny room down in the basement, and start going through the security footage.

The footage proves more interesting then they could have guessed.  They see themselves in the school cafeteria, five years in the future!  None of them are happy about what they see.

And so they set themselves to figuring out what's going on, determined to change the future.  In the processes there's social tension the way only 7th grade can be social tense,  quite a few bits that made me chuckle, and many more that made me grin, some mayhem, and a very affectionate skunk....and the outcome is just what the instigator of the whole shebang would have wanted (or will be wanting, and will be inspired to set in motion....).  

It's a quick and entertaining read, and it might inspire a few of the target audience to introspection about what they might change about themselves (one character, for instance, decides to embrace her inner nerd, another starts working on being less self-centered, etc.; the sort of things that are useful nudges for many 7th graders.).    If you are looking for an oddball, funny sci-book with middle grade angst (and a skunk), this is a good pick! 

(Oddball and quirky is not own personal favorite sort of sci fi, and I don't like being made to think of all the things I'd like future me to have nudged me to change, but despite that I enjoyed it quite a bit!)

Time Villains, by Victor Piñeiro , for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay me!  I have my  Timeslip Tuesday act together this week, with Time Villains, by Victor Piñeiro (Sourcebooks, May, 2021). And it's an exciting one (as the title suggests)!

It starts out peacefully enough, with Javi Santiago and his kid sister Brady dragged out to yet another antique store by their dad.  But the table that comes home with them is is anything but ordinary.  For one thing, it purrs...and that's not all.

Javi needs to bring his English grade up, so he can stay in the same class as his best friend, Wiki (who came by his nickname honestly).  And so Javi needs to ace the assignment that roles around every year--if you could invite any three people to dinner, who would you invite, what would you talk about, and what would you feed them?  Javi's a great cook, so he's not too worried about the menu, but who to invite?  Brainstorming at the table they decide on  young Mozart, the Earl of Sandwich (Javi loves making sandwiches), and when Javi asks that the third guest be someone academic and historical, who sounds scholarly, Wiki picks someone named  Edward Teach.

The table is all set for the guests...and then it starts to shake, with a strange noise coming from underneath it.  Investigating, the kids find a hidden compartment, in which there's a bell, and when they ring it, something extraordinary happens. 

There at the table are child Mozart, the Earl of Sandwich, and Edward Teach--more commonly known as the most notorious pirate of them all, Blackbeard.  It's an awkward dinner party, for sure.  And when it's time to send the guests home again (at least, that's what the bell's supposed to do, they figure), Blackbeard escapes, running off into the woods.

Javi gets an A on the assignment, but to his horror Blackbeard shows up at school, determined to get the bell and summon his pirate crew!  His threats seem all to terribly real, but fortunately the kids don't have to take him down on their own.  The school is staffed with a most unusual group of teachers, and Wiki's Aunt Nancy, who the kids have known all their lives, turns out to be a personage they could never have dreamt of meeting.

Wild hijinks ensue, and Blackbeard almost succeeds in making the school staff walk the plank (the school diving board).  But Javi, though he might not be as fiercely brave as his little sister, or as fiercely smart as Wiki, has it in him to be just the hero that's needed to save the day (with the help of a handful of other allies quickly summoned with the help of the magical table and its bell). 

I appreciated that Javi and his family are Puerto Rican, and Wiki is Haitian; their diverse cultures aren't the point of the story, but come up enough in the course of events to add richness to it (especially with regards to Javi's cooking!)

It's a fun twist on time travel, with nice attention paid to Blackbeard's fiercely intelligent efforts to figure out how the modern world works.  I would have liked it better if there hadn't been fictional characters thrown into the mix as well (like Dr. Jekyll and Don Quihote).  But kids who enjoy the adventures of story characters (real or imaginary) thrown into the real world will probably not complain!  In short, a solid series opener with high entertainment value (and a bit of historical and literary education thrown in!).

The Retake, by Jen Calonita, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

Yay me!  I have read a timeslip book in time for this week's Tuesday!  Travel back to middle school, with all its social pain, in The Retake, by Jen Calonita (February, 2021, Delacorte)

Zoe's phone is full of pictures of her and her best friend, Laura.  Except this summer she had to go on a trip with her family, and Laura was busy sharing pictures of herself having fun with a new group of girls.  And Zoe, desperate to re-establish their friendship in time for the start of 7th grade, is faced with a best friend who isn't interested in her anymore. The first day of 7th grade is a disaster for an already unhappy Zoe.  One thing after another goes wrong.  But that night she finds a strange app has appeared on her phone (while it was confiscated in the principal's office), one that offers a chance to "retake."

Using the app, she opens  a picture of herself at a sleepover three months ago with Laura, the night she first felt like an outsider in her friend's world.  Zoe thinks she'll be able to change things for the better this time around....but instead she makes things even worse.  And so it goes, with Zoe using the app on one picture after another.  

Nothing she does in the past (giving up on things she likes that Laura thinks are childish, trying to come between Laura and her new Queen Bea type friends, and other small differences) makes her friendship with Laura what she wants it to be, and mostly she makes it worse.  But her trips to the past do end up with Zoe finding value in other girls she'd previously dismissed because of her fixation on Laura, and  when she finds herself with the app burned out, back on the second day of seventh grade, she's able to pick up the piece of herself and live more fully in the present.

If you like middle school friendship drama, on repeat, this is a book you will love.  I myself was ready to give up on Laura much sooner than Zoe was, although I did appreciate Zoe's journey towards self-awareness.   It's a useful and hopeful lesson in accepting that you will grow apart from some friends, and grow towards others.  And I'm sure many middle school girls will relate to Zoe's realistically described experiences with great intensity!

Personal note--I moved to the US from the Bahamas to start seventh grade, so my problems were totally different from Zoe's.  I didn't have friendship drama, but I did have the horror of leaving my friends with whom I was still happily being a kid and finding my self plunged into a world where the girls in my class had crushes on the Bee Gees. Nightmarish for innocent little me, and no amount of time travel would have helped.

Finn and the Time-Travelling Pajamas, by Michael Buckley, for this week's Timeslip "Tuesday"

Technically it's Wednesday morning, but time turned ugly on my yesterday, and I did not get my post done for Finn and the Time-Travelling Pajamas, by Michael Buckley (Delecorte, March 2021).  I am fixing that now.

So  Finn and the Time-Travelling Pajamas is the sequel to Finn and the Intergalactic Lunchbox, in which Finn travels through lunch-box created wormholes out into a dangerous galaxy.  He gets home safely, with help from two other kids who are now his best friends--Lincoln (former bully) and Julep (super smart girl), and from his little sister, Katy, and saves the earth from an alien invasion in the process.  

This second book in Finn's saga starts with Finn and Lincoln, now old men, battling a horrible monster called Paradox, who wants to destroy creation in order to rebuild it.  They have been fighting Paradox while travelling through time, gathering future tech and continually hatching new plans, but nothing has worked.  So they decide to involve their younger selves in the battle...and so young Finn, young Lincoln, and young Julep get drawn into a time travelling, chaotic, dangerous, mad-cap swirl of adventure.

It is all a bit dizzying, and I'm not entirely sure everything makes sense; that being said, sense is not the point.  The point is more the excitement of it all, underlain by friendship and loyalty.   Whimsical harum-scarum time travel isn't my favorite, but Buckley does have a wild imagination, that leads to both interesting and sometimes thought-provoking situations at several points in the story.  Sometimes I grinned, and I'm sure many kids might even chuckle out loud.

There is time travel back the past (including the Revolutionary War, Ice Age, and the 1980s), and time travel to the future (interesting possibilities).  They don't stay all that long in any other time, but they do stay long enough for many of their stops to be more than just kaleidoscopic vignettes.

It wasn't quite to my personal taste, although I did become invested enough to care how things turned out, and one future stop was so clearly and interestingly described it will stick in my mind for ages.  It's easy to imagine many kids (9-10 year olds) loving it.

nb:  This book is eligible for the Cybils Awards this year; nominations open Oct 1st!

Parsifal Rides the Time Wave, by Nell Chenault, for Timeslip Tuesday

Parsifal Rides the Time Wave, by Nell Chenault (1962, Little Brown), is a rather charming time travel book for young readers, 6-9 ish. And even though it is short (with only 85 pages of large text, I read it in 20 minutes), I enjoyed it!

Parsifal is a Poddley, a magical creature who travels to world helping children in need. He's so good at the job he's part of the Poddley Emergency Squad, who take on the toughest cases. And when he arrives at a hospital to see a boy making no effort to get well again, he knows he'll have to be on top of his magical game. And so he un-invisibles himself, and starts to get the bottom of Colin's troubles.

It's a sad story. Colin chased a ball into the street, and didn't see the truck coming. His old collie, Lad, his best friend forever, found the strength to force his old bones to run, and knocked Colin mostly out of harms way. Colin ended up in the hospital, with no reason not to make a full recovery, but Lad was killed. And now Colin is sunk in a pit of self-blame and sadness, and refuses to eat or try to get better.

So Parsifal sets to work to rekindle Colin's interest in life. And what better way to do that than to time travel to medieval Scotland, to meet Robert the Bruce!

Parsifal, being magical, makes time travel easy--Colin arrives appropriately clad and speaking Gaelic. And he saves Robert the Bruce from a treacherous attack, with the help of Robert's own dog, Ban. And sadly, like Lad, Ban is killed saving his master. To thank Colin, Robert gives him as special gift--Ban's son, a lovable puppy.

The puppy can't travel through time, but when Colin gets home he finds his parents have gotten him a puppy just like little Ban Jr. And he is happy again.

It's a sweet and pleasant story despite the sadness of dog death. The time travel is fun and exciting, and although I worried that I might find the whole Poddley thing too twee to stomach, I was perfectly fine with it. Though it's an old book it's not particularly dated in feel, and I'd happily give it to an early chapter book reader who loves both dogs and all things medieval.

Thanks Sherry, at Semicolon, for reviewing the book and putting it on my radar! And thanks, fate, for leading me to a used bookstore in Maine where I found a cheap copy!

The Way to Impossible Island, by Sophie Kirtley

A few weeks ago, I read The Wild Way Home, by Sophie Kirtley, for Timeslip Tuesday, and enjoyed it very much.  Happily, when I was over in Ireland book shopping, I bought her second time travel book too--The Way to Impossible Island (Bloomsbury, July 2021 in the UK), which I enjoyed even more!  It is a continuation of the first story, though not a sequel--the point of view characters have changed. 

The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Mothgirl and Dara, the younger siblings of the main characters from book 1.  Both are Irish kids (10/11 year old) but she lives in the Neolithic period, and he in the modern.  Both are stuck in tough places.

Mothgirl's older brother went of on a long journey and hasn't come back, and her father is getting old; with two little kids to feed as well, things are anxious.  And now Vulture, the leader of a horrible neighboring clan, wants to buy Mothgirl from her father to be trained up to be his son's wife.  When her father agrees to the deal, Mothgirl runs with her pet wolf into the night.  

Dara was born with a serious heart condition, and this summer he's finally going have the Big Operation that he thinks will make everything normal.  For instance, he'll row himself out to Lathrin Island, the focus of his dreams of independent adventuring, with no worrying, hovering parents.  When the operation is postponed, he becomes so fed up with it all that he decides to go off and visit the island anyway, and heads down to the beach in the middle of the night.

And  time slips open, and Mothgirl and her wolf are hiding in the boat shed when Dara opens the door.  

Together they make the journey to the island, and almost drown in the wild and dangerous channel.  Together on the island they find shelter, climb to safety, and share knowledge with each other.  And then, no longer together, they return to their homes with greater confidence and surety, more ready for what the future might bring.

It is a lovely story.  There are:

--entertaining and thought-provoking details of cross-temporal communication and misunderstanding 

--exciting dangerous bits 

--a horribly moving bit when the wolf is presumed to have drowned, and Mothgirl forces herself to say goodbye and free his spirit (I'll put in a spoiler here--the dear  wolf friend has not drowned).

--magical bits, including stories tied to places and people 

--and then finally the heartwarming-ness of both kids realizing that they don't need to worry about being "normal" and fitting in to customary ways of being in the world, and that being "big and strong" isn't necessary in order to succeed.  In the end, they are more firmly their own unique (loveable) selves, but they've learned that the journey is better with other people helping and being helped.  

--and even more finally that little kick of emotion at the end of a really good time travel book, when the characters are each in their own time again, never to meet again....

It's almost three hundred pages, but it took me only about an hour and a half to read it because it was So Good.  

Legend of the Storm Sneezer, by Kristiana Sfirlea, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's timeslip story, Legend of the Storm Sneezer, by Kristiana Sfirela (middle grade, May 2020 Monster Ivy Publishing) is one that will please the young reader who likes magical heroines that are easy to cheer for in rule-bending mystery solving!

When Rose was just a baby winged angel (like everyone else around her, not babies, that is, but people with wings), her innate magic manifested when she sneezed out a storm cloud.  The cloud, Stormy, was her best friend, and living with rainfall and electrical sparking as she chased legends in the woods near her home was fine.

Until it wasn't anymore.  

When Stormy was deemed too dangerous and just plain wrong for a girl who was the heir to the Commander of her town, Rose's father paid a witch doctor to trap her magic deep inside her, unable to manifest beyond a few sparks.  That was still too much for her family, though, and so Rose is packed of to Heartstone, an asylum for those with unstable magic are looked up.

Happily Heartstone turns out not to be a fearful prison, but instead is more like a magical boarding school, where its inmates, though still unfree, can live happy lives, and learn, and create.  And even make friends. 

But Heartstone is in danger.  It was built on the site of a long-ago battle between angels and wolf-like wargs, and the ghost of both sides are pressing closer and closer to its walls, in violate of the old agreement made by the asylum's founders.  

Rose, her spirit unbroken by the trauma inflicted on her, is determined to find out what is happening.  Fortunately, she doesn't have to do it on her own; she has good friends and a loyal, ghost-spotting, dog on her side.  She also (and this is where the time-slippness comes into the story) is getting letters from her future selves, that don't offer direct advice, but do have useful clues.  And Stormy, too, isn't quite gone...which is good, because the ghosts aren't the real problem.  The real problem is much worse.

I had reservations when I started the book--I really don't like intrusive narrators breaking the fourth wall, and it starts with an eyeful of that.  And I was a bit concerned that it would fall too far into fantasy whimsy for me to enjoy.  But once Rose gets to Heartstone, the story rips along very nicely indeed, and I was able to start sincerely enjoying her adventures!

And I was rewarded with a story that became bigger in scope as it went on, the sort of story I like even better than just magical school stories, one where past wrongs much be come to terms with or else the present will be destroyed.  So although I never stopped being bothered by breaks in the fourth wall (like getting poked while peacefully reading, and kicking me out of the story), I ended up enjoying this very much.  

(one thing that did strike me as distractingly odd is that although all the angel folk have wings and can fly, there is very little flying, and none of it particularly advances the plot.  The wings could have been left out, and nothing would have been appreciably different....and I think I'd have enjoyed it more if they'd been just people and not angels; "angel" comes with so many religious connotations in our world, although not in this fictional world, that it was distracting.)

nb re time travel--a future Rose does come back in person a few times, making this slightly more time-travelly than just the letters would have been.  But it still could have functioned as  story just fine with out the time travel element, which I found slightly disappointing...until I got to the end, with its strong and welcome hints of more time-travel-ness to come!

The Wild Way Home, by Sophie Kirtley, for Timeslip Tuesday

I subjected The Wild Way Home, by Sophie Kirtley, to one of the harshest tests known for a book--I read it on an airplane that took off at 5:40 am, and then finished it in a busy international airport.  It passed this test with flying colors; it was a riveting and moving read!

Charlie  regularly adventures in the scrappy bit of woods near home; it's a far cry from the ancient forests of Ireland, but its landmarks are a huge part of their emotional geography.  When Charlie's much anticipated little brother is born with a heart problem, and everything becomes too unknown and scary to cope with, Charlie runs into the woods....

But though the major landmarks are still there, the woods are not the same familiar place.  

Then Charlie sees an injured boy face down in the stream, and sets to work rescuing him  But the boy is confused, and can't remember what's happened to him.  Communication is difficult; the boy, called Harby, speaks a strangely broken English, and can't understand much of what Charlie is saying.  And so Charlie realizes that time has slipped backwards--these are the woods of early Neolithic Ireland, and Harby is a Stone Age boy.

As his memories begin to come back to him, Harby manages to communicate his desperation to find and save his little sister, and Charlie's thoughts circle around similar anxieties for the little baby in the hospital at home.  The two kids work together to stay alive (there are wolves in the woods, and food must be worked for), and at last Harby is reunited with his sister and father, and Charlie finds the way back home, with a sturdier mindset about the little brother waiting there.

It is a vivid picture of prehistoric life, the friendship and trust that grows between the kids is convincing, and the mechanism of time travel (a deer tooth Charlie has picked up, which turns out to be Harby's most meaningful talisman) is satisfactory.  The mix of contemporary realism and the Stone Age past works really well, and there's enough adventure in the past to keep things moving nicely. What makes the book really sing though is how moving it is.  I was so emotionally invested that I grew teary toward the end, and thought loving thoughts about my own family...(which I do regularly, but not always with such heightened emotion).

And now I look forward lots to reading the follow up story, The Way to Impossible Island, which features Harby's little sister and Charlie's little brother several years later....

(The story is told in the first person, and I read in someone else's review that Charlie is not identified specifically as boy or girl, which I hadn't noticed, and so I've avoided using pronouns here!)

Yesterday Is History, by Kosoko Jackson, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's time travel book is Yesterday Is History, by Kosoko Jackson (February 2021, Sourcebooks Fire).  It's a very readable and enjoyable gay YA romance, in which time travel serves to complicate a black teenager's life and loves.

Andre has come through cancer, with a new liver received from a young man who died in a car accident.  He's ready to charge back into his life of academic success, complicated by all the school he missed.  But along with the liver, he got something he couldn't have predicted-- a trip to his childhood home back in the 1960s.  There he meets Michael, a guy a little older, friendly, cute, and insightful as heck.   Andre has no clue how this has happened, until the family of the liver donor reaches out.  

Turns out that young man was a time traveler, from a family of time travelers.  And now Andre is one too.  Blake, the younger son, didn't inherit the gene, but his parents assign him to teach Andre the rules of time travelling.  This is a heck of complicated situation for Blake, for a variety of understandable personal reasons, and it's further complicated when he finds himself falling for Andre..

But Andre has been going back to the past to meet Michael again, and they fall in love.  And even though he could imagine easily falling for Blake, what he shares with Michael can't just be dismissed.

Andre wants to make everything ok for Blake (hurting in the present) and for Michael (hurting in the past), but that's impossible, even with time travel. And after lots of internal struggle and another brush with death, he sets out to live his best life in the present.

So time travel is a mechanism for the romance plot, and that's fine, but it's a bit disappointing that except for one hop back to the Titanic, which we don't even get to experience through Andre's point of view, there's just trips back to see Michael (and it was really frustrating that Andre doesn't get Michael to promise always to use a condom, though mercifully we find that Michael doesn't die of AIDS).  

Andre grows up a lot because of his experience in the past though, realizing that instead of just drifting along with parental expectations (in this case, medical school), it's better to find your own passion.  Believably, he doesn't in fact find his (except romantically), but it's a good message for teens regardless. 

It was really nice to read about a likeable gay boy supported by his family finding love!  So read it for that, not because you like time travel, which exists here primarily in the service of romantic entanglement (that being said, the time travel did a good job making the entanglement interesting!)

15 Minutes, by Steve Young, for Timeslip Tuesay

This week's Timeslip Tuesday, 15 Minutes, by Steve Young (HarperCollins, 2006), is one for the younger middle grade set (10-11 year olds).  It's very much aimed at that group in its humor and plot twists, and though I'm happy to recommend it to Wimpy Kid fans, for instance, this means that I didn't personally enjoy it all that much.

Casey Little is pretty ordinary, although his talent for being late is remarkable.  He has a few friends, he is bullied at the normal level for his school (which is considerable), and he longs to be one of the admired, popular kids.  But when, rummaging in the attic, he finds an old watch that used to belong to his grandfather, ordinary goes out the window.

The watch can take its wearer back in time, but only for 15 minutes.  No one else realizes, so there's freedom to try again, this time getting it right.

This re-do ability is convenient for a kid, like Casey, who's a bit of a klutz and who embarrasses himself a lot.  And by fixing all his mistakes he is, in fact, able to attract the attention of one of the popular girls and even excel at football (a game where it helps to know in advance which way everyone's going to go).  But the watch has a mind of its own, and sometimes time goes back when the watch thinks it should, complicating things.

As Casey tries to achieve his (flawed) ideas of perfection, he drifts away from his old friends, and when he realizes that the worst of the bullies, the football star of the school, is in fact the victim of bullying from his own father, he quits the cycle of do-overs, and finds peace in the present. It's a rather abrupt change of heart, but still a nice ending.

I myself don't have much patience for middle school kids who are thoughtless and self-centered, and so didn't like Casey at all for most of the book.  There's a lot of humor that will appeal to Wimpy Kid fans, which means that it's not humor I find all that funny, and the number of times kids get their heads flushed by the bullies is ridiculous.  So not a book for me.

But it is quick read, and an interesting premise, and the final point of the story is a valuable one (about compassion, not making judgements, and a touch of trying to be  one's authentic self) and so I'm sure there are kids out there for whom it is the right book....

No Ordinary Thing, by G.Z. Schmidt, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

As readers of my blog know, I'm a sucker for good middle grade time travel, and No Ordinary Thing, by G.Z. Schmidt, was a very nice one indeed!

When his parents died when he was very young, Adam went to live with his uncle.  Life in the Biscuit Basket, his uncle's bakery, is (literally) sweet, but Adam is withdrawn (never talking at school unless he has to, and with no friends) and worried about his dying pet mouse.  Business is very bad indeed, and the bakery's future looks grim.

Then a stranger arrives, and greets Adam as if they know each other, pulling out a lovely snow globe in which is the cityscape of Manhattan.  He offers no explanations, just the  enigmatic words "great things are in store for you" and "Tonight, go up to the attic."  Adam does, and finds a snow globe of his own.  But there is nothing in it other than a layer of snow.

This soon changes, and when the cityscape appears in it, Adam is transported back in time to a winter's day in New York of the 1930s.  Other journeys await, falling within the years between the first journey and Adam's present of 1999, both within the city and to a smaller town some ways away. The people Adam meets are all connected to the time magic of the snow globe, and to two other talismans of time, one tied to the present, the other to the future...

Life for Adam is now full of mystery, danger from an enemy who wants the magic for his own greedy purposes, and snatched friendships in other times.  And with his adventures in time, his desire to fix things, not just for himself but for those he meets, grows.  But the gifts of time magic are tricky things....

So clearly I'm not going into lots of detail here.  Suffice to say--good characters, good mystery to be unraveled, lots of difficult choices, interesting visits to the past, and an a satisfying (though somewhat rushed) ending.  I especially liked Adam's connection to Victor, one of the homeless men in the nearby shelter where Adam takes unsold baked goods--Victor was once a mathematician, and I like his thoughts about time lots (Victor is also the hero of the final confrontation....).  The time travel is interesting--Adam never stays very long in any place or time, and his visits to the same places are sometimes out of chronological order.  I'm not quite sure why the snow globe took him when and where it did, but it all ties together (clever snow globe!).

If you love time travel stories that are centered on making meaningful connections across time, this is one you'll like lots!

note re diversity--Adam's mother was from China, and the author likewise was born in China but grew up in the US.

The Dog Who Saved the World, by Ross Welford, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Dog Who Saved the World, by Ross Welford (middle grade, Schwartz and Wade 2020 in the US), was published in the UK in 2019 before the coronavirus hit....and it's a bit too on the nose to make for real comfort reading, even though it is an engaging and entertaining story.

Georgie loves her dog Mr. Mash fiercely (he's a rambunctious, loving, and unfortunately gassy dog), but her father's new girlfriend, Jessica, is allergic.  Mr. Mash must go back to St. Woof's dog shelter.  Georgie immediately starts spending most of her free time there, taking him out for romps along with her best friend Ramzy.  On one such outing, Mr. Woof runs off with an old woman's bathing cap, destroying it.  

This is Mr. Woof's first contribution toward saving the world, because as restitution the two kids are roped into helping at her impressive, and very private, lab, home to an incredible virtual reality set up.  Georgie is the first guinea pig to try it, and it's certainly impressive.  The virtual reality is more real than even its inventor planned (there is a giant scorpion that crept in unasked for, whose sting is real....).  

Then a terrible dieses shows up in dogs, and begins spreading to people.  Mr. Woof, and all canine kind in England, are slated to be killed in an effort to control it.  Jessica is among the scientists working desperately to find the cure...but it is not happening quickly enough.  

The virtual reality set up is so good, though, that it can be programed to take its users to the future.  And this is how Georgie and Ramzy plan to save the world.  Without Mr. Woof, though, it wouldn't have worked....

There's a lot more to the book--crazy shenanigans are required, for instance, and plottings and planning, along with Georgie's more ordinary concerns about Jessica becoming part of her life, and Ramzy's worries about his own family (they are barely getting by).  And all of it makes for a fun read, and it is really easy to cheer the two kids on, except, of course, that it hits rather close to home.  (I really wish that it wasn't a girl from China who brought the disease to the UK.  The author had no way of predicting the anti-Asian prejudice that happened in the US because of Covid, but it was in retrospect an unfortunate choice on his part).

In any event, the story is a good mix of the serious and the exciting, and dog-lovers, in particular, will be deeply invested in story (spoiler--Mr. Woof survives, and the cure he helps bring back to the present saves many other dogs as well).    

Time travel through virtual reality is a new one for me, and I liked that part more than I did Mr. Woof (I am a cat person).  Though of course it's wildly improbable, it had enough internal logic (of a mad science sort) to it that the improbability didn't matter much to me.  Georgie's actual time in the future was very brief, and rather awful, since it was a time line where the cure came a year later.  But at least that future never ended up happening.

Blitzed, by Robert Swindells, for Timeslip Tuesday

I thought about the Blitz quite a lot in the Spring of 2000, when life became full of fearful uncertainty mixed with dull, aching boredom, and I wondered how the people of London could have kept going with bombs raining death every night for months.  Blitzed, by Robert Swindells (May 2002), is the story of a modern kid who gets to find out. 

Georgie is a normal boy of 2002, with a bit of an attitude, a fondness for "creeping" with his mates through the local back gardens in commando-style raids (which didn't endear him to me), and a keen interest in World War II.  He's thrilled to go on a class trip to a former POW camp turned WW 2 museum, with 29 huts each showcasing a particular aspect of the war.  The fifth hut, in which there's a replica of a bombed London street, is the most gripping.  All the sounds and smells are there, and there's even a hand, reaching helpless out of the rubble.  And suddenly Georgie is there too, seeing it all in real life, and running from the desperate hand, instead of trying to help.

The first few days of being lost, scared, and starving are terrible ones, but then his luck gets better.  He finds a group of kids living furtively in a bombed out pub, surviving under the leadership of Ma, who lets Georgie join them.  

Ma isn't a grown-up herself, though; she is only 14.  By dint of shear force of will she's able to keep the kids reasonably clean and fed (though poorly) with her wages from a work at a dingy second-hand clothing shop.  And Georgie takes his place in the group, and starts helping her in the shop (when the proprietor is away).  It is all horrible (and one of the kid's is killed by a bomb), and rather boring for the people living through it at the same time time.  

But things heat up story-wise when Georgie finds evidence that the shop keeper is a spy, and Ma and the kids help find more evidence.  Georgie gets a real war time adventure, and then finds himself home again....and finds Ma again too. 

Georgie tells his story in short first person chapters, giving it an immediacy and intimacy that draws the reader in (and making it a good one for emergent middle grade readers).  His traumatized reactions (throwing up more than once, collapsing into tears) ring true.  Yet it's not all doom and gloom; Georgie is a smart-alek, and though I didn't like this in his 21st century self, it added humor to his time in the past, as did the 21st century colloquialisms and slips that he makes as a time-traveler.

Young readers who like stories of kids surviving on their own in disasters, becoming a found families in the process will enjoy this one lots!  I did, after I got over my initial dislike for Georgie (I just really don't like kids who destroy gardens.  Fortunately his parents make him go fix the garden fence he broke, and the satisfaction he gets from this is a sign that character growth will come....).  

Da Vinci's Cat, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, for Timeslip Tuesday

Da Vinci's Cat, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (May 25th 2021, Greenwillow Books), is a real treat for those of us who love time travel, cats, and the splendors and intrigues of Renaissance Italy!

Frederico is just an ordinary boy in 16th-century Rome (he's not extraordinary among heirs to wealthy and powerful noble families, and it's not that odd for a kid be held as a hostage by the Pope to keep those families in check).  But his life becomes most extraordinary when a cat comes out of a large and strangely decorated wooden wardrobe.  Frederico is lonely--games of checkers with the Pope, chats with Raphael, busy and distracted by his art, and annoying tutors are the extent of his social life--and he welcomes the companionship of the cat.  

The strange man coming out of the wardrobe soon after is at first less welcome.  Herbert has arrived a strange place, New Jersey, far in the future, and offers chocolate, peanuts, and conversation (all welcomed) and all he wants from Frederico are sketches by the resident artists (as well as Raphael, Michelangelo is there, busily painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel).  Turns out the wardrobe was made by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Herbert is taking advantage of it to collect art to sell in the 21st century.

Herbert desperately wants Frederico to help him get Raphael to sign a sketch for him to take home....but things get complicated, and Herbert's visits stop. Instead, a 21st century girl arrives through the wardrobe instead.  Bee has found herself tangled in Herbert's unfinished business....and she needs Frederico's help if she is going to finally get the Raphael sketch signed.  

And so a lovely cross-culture exchange happens, with Frederico moving from hostility and suspicion to friendship, and Bee moves from babbling about Narnia to accepting she's 500 years in the past....But the sketch signing becomes more complicated than expected, and one thing leads to another until Michelangelo's completion of the Sistine Chapel, and Frederico's own life, are in danger...

I really enjoyed this one lots. Not one, perhaps, for lovers of wild excitement, though there was tension throughout, mounting toward the end.   As well as checking the basic boxes of my personal taste--Renaissance Italy, art, cat, friendship, and of course time travel, it's a very character rich story, rich as well in descriptions of beautiful and interesting things, the sort of story which I personally like more than wild adventures.  I also liked Bee very much and really enjoyed her interactions with "Fred." 

It's neat time travel too, not explained much but given a magical credibility by the Da Vinci having made the wardrobe.  Mostly we see Frederico's time through Bee's eyes, which was very relatable, but his reactions to the strangeness of her came up a lot too, and were often amusing.  

And it has the added bonus of being educational--I myself learned more history through reading children's books than I ever did in school, and this one would have filled a gap very nicely indeed (I can't remember any fiction about the Italian Renaissance from when I was kid (1970s, early 80s....)

(side note, for those looking for normalization of same sex parents--Bee has two great moms.  Frederico's reaction--which one had the larger dowry?).

Glitch, by Laura Martin, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

I really enjoyed Glitch, by Laura Martin (Harper Collins, June 2020)--not only was there fun time travel, but it was also a school story with an enemies into friends twist, so it was right up my alley!

Regan and Elliot both have the gene that lets them time travel, and both are students at the Academy which trains kids like them to be Glitchers, going back in time on missions to keep history safe from interference by those who would alter what actually happened.  They don't have a choice about this--all kids with this gene are gathered in by the Academy as infants.  Regan's mom happens to be the director, but Elliot has no memories of his family.  

The two of them dislike each other lots--Elliot thinks Regan is a spoiled princess, and Regan thinks Elliot is a know-it-all jerk.  Neither is entirely wrong.  But fate throws them together when Regan finds a note left to her by someone from the future, and Elliot intercepts it.  It's a crypt note warning of things to come and things that must be done, and both kids are appalled to find themselves entangled in one of the very butterfly effects they are supposed to be working to stop.  

Not content with implicating the two kids in an illegal manipulation of time, fate throws another wrench in their lives.  Competing in a stimulated mission challenge, they unwittingly demonstrate that to the Academy staff that they make a great team.  And so, with no say in the matter, they are shipped off to an even more secret campus of the Academy to train together.  For the rest of their lives as Glitchers (which won't be that long, because time travel burns a person out, forcing adults to retire early), they will have to work together.

But to do that, they will have to figure out how to get along, and figure out the clues given them from the future in order to save the Academy and the Glitchers from a threat to its very existence by their enemies who want to change the past.

It beautifully vivid time travel to a variety of periods (mostly simulations sending them into pivotal moments of American history, like Gettysburg and Lincoln's assassination).  The task in each mission is to identify and foil the person trying to change the past.  Regan has almost preternatural intuition when it comes to identifying that person, and Elliot has a wealth of knowledge and a respect of the rules, so they do actually complement each other.  

The time travel is brisk and to the point; the kids can't interact with the past for fear of changing it themselves, so it's more a matter of observation, survival, and capturing the enemy.  There's enough consideration about the ethics of the whole set-up to give the Glitchers the moral high ground, while being thought provoking.   And it was a fun story in its own right, with the threat to the Academy giving the story dramatic forward progress while still leaving lots of room for the more personal story of Elliot and Regan figuring things out.

(there was only thing that bothered me--as an adult, I was rather distressed about kids being taken in as babies, and how little the Academy does to be a warm and nurturing place, which explains a lot about poor Elliot!)

But in any event, I would definitely read another book about the Glitchers!

(Elliot is described as dark-skinned, and shown on the cover thus, and so I'm counting this as one for more list of diverse middle grade sci fi/fantasy).

Tangara, by Nan Chauncy, for Timeslip Tuesday

I have a classic for this week's Timeslip Tuesday--Tangara, by the great Australian author Nan Chauncy (1960).  I gave it five stars, but with a note of caution. 

This is the story of Lexie, a white girl in 1950s Tasmania, who travels back in time to the 19th century where she is befriended by Merrina, an aboriginal Tasmanian girl. A halcyon time ensues, with the white girl learning some of the language and culture of her new friend (rather magically, and Lexie takes it rather for granted that they can talk to each other), with much laughter and joy. It is lovely reading.  The Aboriginal culture is exoticized, yes, but through the eyes of a child for whom it is more fascinated interest than colonialist superiority; the Aboriginal culture is not less than or worse than the European culture. There's a bit when Lexie eats a live grub, and manages to appreciate the taste. The cross cultural exploration goes both ways--Merrina thinks Lexie smells awful, finds clothes, and in particular the peeling off of stockings, hilarious, and makes fun of Lexie's pathetic attempts to move silently through the bush.

But then there is a massacre, and Lexie is there when two white men gun down Merrina's people, who are trapped in the deep cleft in the earth that has been hiding them from the genocidal invaders.

Gradually, Merrina fades in Lexie's memory, and her life becomes one of school, girl guides, and ordinary friends. But Merrina is still there in the ravine, and when Lexie's older brother finds himself injured and alone in that very ravine, she saves his life, and Lexie sees her again, with much love and sadness mixed.

So the note of caution--this book was written in 1960. The everyday terminology used when discussing Aboriginal people is offensive to the modern reader. Off-setting this is that Lexie and her extended family find the past genocide appalling in no uncertain terms, at least once correct someone being blatantly disparaging about the Aboriginal Tasmanians, and strongly condemn past practices, like putting people's bones in museums. So though I was worried this would be so horrifyingly racist and patronizing I wouldn't be able to read it, I was in fact able to.

And I ended up being tremendously moved by it, to the point of tears. And then I went and read up on Tasmanian history, and learned lots (since I was starting basically at zero, this was not hard.).  One thing I learned was that Nan Chauncy, being a person of her time, saw no reason not to doubt the myth of Aborignal extinction in Tasmania.

In conclusion, this is the sort of time travel I love best--with the time travel giving just huge emotional weight to the story because of the deep friendship between the two girls, while educating and entertaining and horrifying me along the way.  And as an added bonus, the landscape and its flora and fauna came alive to me as well.

Because it is, as I said above, problematic despite the author's good, and rather successful, intentions to be non-racist, even though it's what I'd classify as middle grade, it is best for a reader who is able to contextualize what was taken for granted, and not internalize it.  That being said, I would have loved it as a ten year old, for the same reasons I loved it today.