A Spoonful of Time, by Flora Ahn, for Timeslip Tuesday

A tasty one for the week's Timeslip Tuesday-- A Spoonful of Time, by Flora Ahn (April 11, 2023, Quirk Books), in which the time travel magic is inextricably linked to delicious Korean food!  

Maya's Korean grandmother has come to live with her and her busy mother, and though Halmunee is loosing her memory, she still has brightly lucid moments in the kitchen, making delicious food.  The food is more than just tasty, though--it transports Maya and her grandmother back in time, to watch as young Halmunee and her family, back in Korea, eat the very same thing!  Turns out, Maya's family has a gift for timeslipping through food, and though they can only watch as spectators, it's still wonderful.  And Maya is thrilled to learn more about her family; her mother has never wanted to talk about it, and Maya is pining to learn more about her absent father.

It was a pleasant start to the story, with simple time slipping tourism, but things get more intense when Maya meets a boy who's also a time slipper.  As the time travel becomes more than just episodes of watching her family, she realizes she's caught up in a series on interconnected mysteries, hinging on the secrets of her missing father and her mother's strained relationship with Halmunee.  

And by the end, it becomes powerful and truly magical in the best sort of twisting timeness as Maya learns the truths her mother kept from her.  (Twisty enough that even a relatively strong time travel reader like me had to stop and think hard about what was happening and when....not a complaint, becuase I like this sort of thing!)

Maya's somewhat strained relationship with her best friend, Jada give this nice middle grade realism, and I loved how this tension was resolved (with the help of cookies!); I appreciated, as many middle grade readers probably will, that it was casually mentioned that Jada has a crush on another girl.   And as an added bonus for young foodies, there are recipes included.

Sometime in Summer, by Katrina Leno, for Timeslip Tuesday

 A  younger YA/upper Mg (12-13 year olds) to read at the beach for this week's Timeslip Tuesday--Sometime in Summer, by Katrina Leno (June 2022, Little Brown).

14 year old Anna is sure she's unlucky.  She and her best friend haven't talked for months, her parents are getting a divorce, and her mother, Miriam, has decided the family bookstore has to be sold.  Even though Anna isn't herself a reader, she loves the bookstore dearly, she misses her friend but stubbornly refuses to reach out to her to try to set things right, and she can't understand how her parents, who still seem to love each other, won't stay married.

But two months away from California at a New England beach town in the little house her mom has just inherited turns out to be just what she needs.  A comet her mom remembers from 20 years ago has returned, lighting up the night sky with its swarm of meteors, and the moonstone ring her dad gave her lights up in magical (?) sympathy, and in her night time wanderings she finds a door to a small shore structure that should be locked, but isn't.  And when she steps through, she finds a boy and girl her own age, with whom she becomes friends.

Knowing in advance that this is a time travel book makes it obvious almost immediately (and there are lots of clues even if you don't know) that she's meeting her parents back in the summer when they first met.  And this experience, so strange and yet so friendly for her is just what she needs.  By the end of the book, she's been able to take a hard look at herself and the way she's reacting to life, and she makes remarkable progress in growing up.

Which isn't that exciting as a plot point, especially when Anna is somewhat annoying for most of this rather long (almost 400 page) book in which nothing much actually happens.  But still it was a pleasant seaside vacation for me as a reader, and I did enjoy the time travel lots, even though (or perhaps because) it came with almost no time travel tension.  

So yes, if you are looking for sun and sand and books being read and a little gentle time travel mystery with the heroine setting off on a hopeful path, you'll enjoy it, especially if you are a kid a little younger than Anna.

The Rhythm of Time, by Questlove and S.A. Crosby for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay me, for getting my Timeslip Tuesday act back together!  With a good one, no less- The Rhythm of Time, by Questlove and S.A. Crosby (middle grade, April 18, 2023, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers).

Rahim's parents are pretty strict when it comes to screen time (as in, there isn't any), but fortunately his best friend Kasia lives nearby, and is happy to share not just her computer but the brilliant gadgets she invents.  Like the cell phone she's built just for him, which though it looks like a clunky brick will still let Rahim check out the 20th century rap music he loves.

But it is much more than it seems.  In fact, it is linked to a secret government satellite, and interfaces with technology the feds definitely don't want falling into the hands of a couple of kids, and it sends Rahim back in time to 1997.  Before Kasia can figure out how to get him back, her house is raided by government agents who confiscate all her devices...

She's able to get them back (being brilliant), and tells Rahim, via the phone, not to make any changes to the timeline while she figures out how to get him back too.  But when Rahim makes friends with the kid who will grow up to be his own dad, changes come thick and fast.  Temporal collapse begins, with extinct animals and historical characters taking over the streets of 1997 Philadelphia....

It's a fun juxtaposition of Rahim anxious about getting home while having adventures with his dad to be like sneaking out to a rap concert and taking down a bully, and Kasia outwitting the feds back home.  But the timeline gets drastically altered, and when Rahim does return, his life has changed for the worse...and Kasia must work frantically to fix it and prevent utter temporal collapse with government agents breathing down her neck.  

It's lots of fun!  Rap music, a black girl STEM genius, dodos etc., and family dynamics make for a great combination!  The time travel goes down nice and easy, with a lovely combination of stress and humor.  The immediate problems may be solved by the end of the book, but there's set up for a sequel, which I'd love to happen.

The Rhythm of Time is eligible for the middle grade speculative fiction category of the Cybils Awards, so keep it in mind when the public nomination period opens in October.

Ravencave, by Marcus Sedgwick, for Timeslip Tuesday

I am determined to get back into the swing of blogging now that both kids are back from college and I have a long month ahead with no particular busyness planned.  That being said, Ravencave, by Marcus Sedgwick (March 2023, Barrington Stock), although a really good book, and perhaps the last children's/YA book of his to be published (he sadly died in the fall of 2022 at a much too young age) is a slightly questionable Timeslip Tuesday book.  It is actually a ghost story, but there is, toward the end, enough timeslipping that I am going ahead and using it today.

The story takes place in a single day, though it is a day is suffused with memories.  Jamie and his family (two parents, older brother) are on a rather miserable family holiday in Yorkshire.  The main point of the trip is to scatter his grandmother's ashes in the region where she was born, and the father is also keen to visit places where his ancestors lived and worked.  But the weather has been awful, the father has lost his job, and the mother, a published author, is suffering from writer's block.  No one is paying any attention to Jamie, not even his brother, though they used to get along really well.

And then Jamie sees a ghost, a girl who wants his help.  She's not just any ghost, but a family member from a hundred odd years ago, and she leads him away from his family, underground where a terrible tragedy occurred.  In the shock of what Jamie learns, his spirit briefly slips through time, visiting his long ago family in the places important to their lives.  It's no more than a few pages, but it serves to connect Jamie to the land and its history, and learn how he fits into it, in a way that's very meaningful, and rather comforting.

Sedgwick did a top notch job of building the suspense of the story.  It's not just a story of the supernatural, but a story of a hurting family and their relationships to each other.  And its the story too of the injustices experienced by the ancestral family--there's a thread of socialism that will appeal to progressive young readers (it's an 11-14 year old book, I think) without being too heavy handed to disrupt the flow of the story.

Knowing that the author was facing death while writing this incredibly poignant story makes it even more powerful.  One of the most memorable of the 100 books I've read so far this year.  It's only out in the UK at the moment, but if it sounds at all appealing, it's worth heading over to Blackwells and ordering a copy (with free shipping to the US and a favorable exchange rate), which was what I did, very soon after reading this review at Magic Fiction Since Potter.

Kingston and the Echoes of Magic, by Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi, for Timeslip Tuesday

Yay for me!  I have a Timeslip Tuesday offering, and happily it was a book that was such a fast fun read that I was able to get it read between coming home from work and now---Kingston and the Echoes of Magic, by Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi (October 2021, G.P. Putnam's Sons).  

It's the second of a duology, and if you haven't read book 1 (Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found) you will want to before opening this one, because otherwise you will probably flounder not knowing who everyone is, and all that happened before this one starts--in a nutshell, Kingston, his cousin Veronica, and their best buddy Too Tall saved Brooklyn from a magical catastrophe involving a portal to an alternate dimension, but couldn't rescue Kingston's dad, who remains trapped there.

Life is going on after those adventures....or maybe not.  Kingston and Veronica realize they are stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again.  And when they start hunting for an explanation, they find that the looping is tied to a plot to rewrite the timeline of the world, destroying all the reality they love.  Hints and strange helpers lead them on a path through time, as they slip into different pasts trying to find a way to stop the magician mastermind who is behind it all.  They spend time with their teenaged dads, for instance, and a fascinating visit to ancient Egypt is key to saving their world.  

Though it's said several times in the book that it isn't time travel, per se, it certainly was time slip, and very entertaining slipping it was.  And the authors did a great job making it all complicated, but easy to accept without fuss.  The kids are great characters, though I wish Too Tall, the only one without magic, had had a Moment of Helping that wasn't just him being tall enough to get out of the lap of a giant Pharoh statue and such.  He deserved more than just being the tall sidekick.

These are great books for kids who like arcane secrets, riddles, and magic tricks, kids who want books about city kids with magic, especially black urban kids who will get to see themselves here, and for grownups like me who enjoy good magical time slipping.

The McNeills at Rathcapple, by Meta Mayne Reid, for Timeslip Tuesday

The McNeills at Rathcapple, by Meta Mayne Reid (1959), is a lovely vintage time travel book set in Ireland, and I wish I'd had it to read as a kid (although I still enjoyed it as a grownup).

When we meet Sandy and Richard, they are living in rented rooms in a city in Northern Ireland without their beloved dog and their slightly less beloved cat while their father searches for a new job (he's a historian) and recovers from being ill.   They have an uncle, holed up in the family's ancestral home, Rathcapple, but there was family unpleasantness, and they've never met him.  But the uncle is getting old, and their mother decides that they shall foist themselves on him, and live in a few rooms of to the side, until their father is better and has a solid job.  The uncle is not welcoming, but doesn't forbid this, as long as his work on his book about local history and nature isn't disturbed.

Sandy and Richard are delighted to be in the country, with their pets.  The old, ruined fortification, the rath that the house is named for, is a thrilling place, and there they meet a young horseman, Angus, who seems almost magical.  They are determined to make their uncle want them to stay by helping him find the last bits of information he needs for the book--the story of the fiddler who played a role in a long-ago Irish rising against the English, and the story of a young nursemaid to the McNeills accused of stealing a family treasure.  

And this is where the time travel comes in (if you don't want spoilers, skip to the next paragraph) --Richard visits the fiddler, and inhabits the Mcneill boy his own age fleeing for his life, and Sandy in her turn lives the crucial day of the young nursemaid's life.  But though they know what really truly happened, they have to find proof, and their quest to find corroborating evidence through material remains and historical documents was as interesting to me as the time travel itself.  They are encouraged in their efforts by the horseman, Angus, who is himself unmoored in time and who I assume is the instigator of their time slipping...

There are more quotidian doings and happenings of the sort you'd expect from two kids moved to an old house in the country, and this was very enjoyable as well.  There is, for instance, a lovely pageant that is quite amusing, jam making, exploration of the countryside, and shenanigans with a local boy who becomes their friend (one such episode is shown on the cover, which I find an odd choice, when the illustrator had the big old house and the ruined rath and the heroic figure of Angus on his magnificent horse on hand; perhaps "boy riding cattle, seen from behind" seemed more Exciting and Likely to Appeal to Boys....).

It didn't quite reach the numinous heights I wished it would have, possibly because there wasn't quite enough emotional tension, but it came close, and I am pleased that there is a second book about the family for me to look forward to.

Llama Rocks the Cradle of Chaos, by Jonathan Stutzman, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

A fun picture book for today's Timeslip Tuesday, as my brain is somewhat fried.  Llama Rocks the Cradle of Chaos, by Jonathan Stutzman, illustrated by Heather Fox (July 22, 2022, Henry Holt).  This is the third adventure of the titular llama, but happily I am a strong enough reader that I was able to plunge right in.  

Llama is a creature of many interests.  Chief among them  is eating delicious baked goods, especially donuts.   When his birthday donut proves to be the most delicious thing he's ever eaten, the sadness of not being able to eat it again overwhelms him.  Fortunately, the time travelling pants he has on hand can solve the problem!  And so he sets off to the past to be reunited with the donut....unfortunately, without reading the instructions....

And things go haywire, ending up with Llama, his younger self, and a whole bunch of other creatures brought along by mistake in Llama's house, which is getting wrecked....All ends well though, and more treats are eaten.

It is a bright and cheerful romp, a good introduction for the very young to the central question of time travel--the peril of changing the past!  Interestingly, some reviewers on Goodreads seem to have found the time travel confusing, but I do not think children will have this problem, because of course if you have time travel pants (or a time travel diaper, as Baby Llama has), you can travel through time and of course things can get mixed up.....and of course if you are reading, as I have done, time travel books where the time travel gets confusing, the only thing to do is shrug and role with it because otherwise your head hurts.  This did not make my head hurt, and Bably Llama was adorable.

Thunderbird: Book Two, by Sonia Nimr, for Timeslipe Tuesday

In the first Thunderbird book, which I reviewed last fall) by Sonia Nimr we met Noor, an orphaned Palestinian girl who finds she must save the world from a collapsing chaos of demonic intrusion into our world by finding four phoenix feathers.  The catch is that the phoenix only sheds one feather per immolation, and immolations only happen once every 500 years or so, so she must travel back through time with the help of a djinn in cat form to find them.  The first book was good, but the second book (November 22, 2022 by University of Texas Press) is even better.  With all the set up in place, the reader is plunged into a  really gripping time travel back to Jerusalem of the Crusades.  

Noor arrives outside of the 12th century Jerusalem dazed and confused.  Almost immediately she is captured and taken, blindfolded, to the secret home of  the resistance to the Crusaders who have seized the city, who think she might be a spy.  Fortunately they believe her story when she finally brings herself to try to tell the truth (made more convincing by her talking cat comrade).  Her own quest of the phoenix feather gets slightly derailed when she throws herself into the plans of the resistance to humiliate the crusader overlord, and save the precious library that he plans to burn.

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....

I am very much looking forward to volume 3, which sadly isn't out right now.....

The Dollhouse, by Caris Cotter, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday is The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story, by Caris Cotter...and I havered a bit about whether this was timeslip or, as the title would suggest, a ghost story, but I decided it counted as the former...

It's the story of Alice, a girl who's life is upended where her mother decides to leave her father after he once again puts work before family.  So instead of the long anticipated summer vacation together, Alice is dragged off by her mother to a remote mansion, where her mother will be the live in nurse for the old lady who recently bought the place who just had an accident, and Alice will be at loose ends.  The journey is inauspicious--their train has an accident, and Alice is left with a mild concussion.  And when they arrive at Blackwood house, grand and beautiful, Lily, the housekeeper's daughter who though 16 has the mind of a much younger child, shows Alice the bedroom she'll stay in, and confides that it is haunted.  

And indeed, when Alice wakes up the next morning, there in bed with her is a red headed girl.  Their brief meeting ends when Alice (not unnaturally) starts screaming her head off...and the girl is gone, and Alice's concussion is blamed for the experience.  Alice and Lily explore the house together, and a hidden stairway takes them up to the attic, where they find a marvelous miniature replica of Blackwood House.  One of the dolls looks just like the red headed girl...because she is (sort of).

This girl, Fizz, lived in the house back in the 1920s, and over the next few weeks Alice finds herself going back and forth from the present into Fizz's life, where only Fizz, and her old sister, Bubble (who is also developmentally delayed).  But it is not straight time travel--the dollhouse acts a conduit to the past, and when Alice changes things in the dollhouse, they change in reality.  The secrets and tensions of the past overlap with Alice's own worries, and Fizz's instance that Alice is in fact the dead ghost do nothing to sooth anybody's nerves...

And then tragedy upends Fizz's life, and that too is mirrored in what happens to Alice...

I really don't think there any actual ghosts, despite the title, just the ghostly memories of the past....unless you count the dollhouse, as a menacing ghostly power from the past, or perhaps Fizz showing up in Alice's time, waking up in the bedroom that used to be hers long ago....but Fizz never sticks around to do any actual haunting....so readers who go in expecting ghosts might be confused and disappointed. 

The one thing I didn't care for was the two girls, one in the past and one in the present, with developmental delays, described as being like "little girls"--they were too much like each other, sweet, innocent, happy, and un-three-dimensional, and that jarred a bit.  They seemed to be in the book to provide foils for Fizz's sharpness and Alice's vivid imagination (I guess), but while just one of them I could have accepted, having two felt forced.

(I have to be a bit spoilery to talk about the time travel, so if you are intrigued at this point, you can stop reading this now and go get ahold of the book--it is very good, full of mystery and emotion and tension, and the dollhouse and its wonderful miniatures is fascinatingly horrific to read about!)

This reminded me, timeslip wise, of Tom's Midnight Garden.  As is the case with that book, in which an old woman's memories are what creates the young boy's time travel, Alice is caught in Fizz's memories, tied strongly to the anchor of the dollhouse.  In both, time travel is a sort of tourism to the past; Alice doesn't affect any real change in Fizz's life, but I found it very satisfactory to read about. 

The Carrefour Curse, by Dianne K. Salerni, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is The Carrefour Curse, by Dianne K. Salerni (middle grade, January 31, 2023, Holiday House), and it's a great one!

Take an old family house, full of secrets, most of them disturbing, some downright horrific.

Populate this house with an extended family who have elemental magic gifts, some powerful, some pleasant, and (again) some horrific.  (lots of twists and turns to appreciate!)

Send a girl, Garnet, to the house, who has never been there before, as her mother wanted to raise her away from all the trauma she herself had experienced there.

Trap Garnet, along with all the other family members, inside this magic filled house, until the house choses which of them should be the new head of the family.

And then add time travel, and journey along with Garnet through the whole magical, twisted story of the Carrefours past and present as she not only discovers hidden truths, but sets things right that had gone horribly wrong...with the help of time travelling....

The result is a beautifully gripping middle grade fantasy, full of memorable characters, mysteries, and intriguing magic!

The time travelling came as a pleasant surprise, and provided Garnet with key pieces of information that she was able to piece together to figure out how choices made in the past had shaped the confusing and dangerous present she found herself in.  She goes both to her own mother's past as a teenager, but further back down her family's history as well.  Almost trapped in a hideous magical work of an ancestor a few generations back, she's able, with help from another time travelling ancestor, to break the abominable magical working and set the house and its family on a more wholesome track.  It all builds gradually and inexorably up to a final climax that turns into a very satisfactory ending!

Highly recommended--there's enough horror for the young horror fans, enough fantastical detail for the fantasy lovers, and enough non-fantastical family dynamics and mystery for readers who aren't quite either of the above.

Midwinter Burning, by Tanya Landman, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book,,Midwinter Burning, by Tanya Landman (November 2022 in the UK, Walker Books), was brought to my attention by this review at Magic Fiction Since Potter.  Ever since I discovered this blog I've been buying books from the UK recommended here as briskly as funds allow from  Blackwells (free shipping that doesn't involve Amazon).  This story, promising much that I enjoy in English fantasy, was my most recent purchase, and although my hopes were perhaps a bit too high, I read it in a single sitting with much enjoyment.

Alfie, evacuated from London in World War II, arrives at a safe haven not just from the threat of war, but from his unloving mother. Welcomed at a small farm in southwest England, he can hardly fathom the kindness with which the motherly woman of the farm showers him.  Even having one of the bullies from his school in London end up in the same village isn't enough to squash the happiness he finds in the animals, the country side, the marvelous ocean, and his growing confidence that he is settling into a peaceful grove at the farm.  

All he is missing is a friend...and then, out of the corner of his eye, a boy appears; another lonely one like himself (the reader has met this boy already in the preface of the book set in prehistoric England, so knows what's happening...).  They speak different languages, but manage to communicate nonetheless, and Smidge becomes the best friend Alfie could have imagined.

But always the standing stones overlooking the ocean pull at him disquietly, and stories of the midwinter burning that has been a community tradition even in recent times disquiet the reader...The land is old, and the stones have a dark history.  

And when time slips more directly, Alfie and Smidge hit that darkness head on.  In the present Alfie, still wearing his angel wings from the village nativity play (not a successful production....) and desperate to save Smidge from an evil fate back in his own time, is beset by bullies, pursued by them over a landscape where past and present are colliding, until he slips back into Smidge's time himself.

This is a fantastic part of the book, beautifully strange and evocative, and although the book as a whole didn't quite reach the heights of numinous terror with the darkness of past and present colliding that  I think it could have, it came awfully close.  There was one thing in particular that struck a false note for me.  I felt slightly cheated when it was revealed quite a ways into the book that time had always been a slippery thing for Alfie--even in London he'd seen the past playing out in the present.  This was something of a casual aside, and I felt it badly weakened the power of this particular place and this particular story, making Alfie the special thing and not the land and the memories of ancient darkness it held.

Still, come for a pleasant WW II evacuee story, stay for the threat of human sacrifice....highly recommended,

The Last Straw, by Margaret Baker, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

The Last Straw, by Margaret Baker, is a lovely little vintage (1971) time travel story.  It starts with a fire that engulfs the London home of the three siblings who are the main characters.  Rose, Guy, and Bell are saved by their quick thinking baby siter, but their parents, finding the house on fire when they get home, are injured trying to get in to save them.  With no handy relations to take the kids in while the parents are in hospital, the baby siter comes to the rescue again, arraigning for them to be paying guests at her parents small farm in the south west.  

It is winter, with little to do, but exploring up in the attic one day Bell is thrilled to find a dusty straw doll (she is grieving the loss of all her own dolls in the fire).  This is no ordinary doll--she is alive!  The kids take this in their stride remarkably well, accepting a talking straw doll without question.  Bell names her Poppy...and the adventures begin.

Talking is only the start of Poppy's magic.  She is a creature of an old harvest ritual, once made anew every year but now almost forgotten.  But she still has power, and she takes the children away from winter into summers years and years gone by.  Their first trip is to the farm as it was in World War II, the second to Victorian times, and though in the later there is some tension when Poppy is lost to them, there is never real danger.  The kids they meet in the past knew Poppy in their own times, and she took them on much wilder adventures, but this group of kids has only mild adventures.  But then they ask Poppy to take them to the future, and what they see dismays them badly.  

Does Poppy have enough of her old harvest magic still in her dusty straws to change what is to come?

I find that Baker doesn't quite hit emotional tension quite hard enough to be brilliant, sometimes coming close enough to be frustrating but not quite getting there.  That being said, I am enjoying working my through her books (though the ones that interest me most are hard to find.  I am annoyed that they did not come my way when I lived in the Bahamas as a child in the 1970s, with a small school library full of this sort of book).  But be that as it may, even at this point in life I found this one a pleasant summer-full read,  just what I needed in this past weekend's cold snap!

Elsewhere Girls, by Emily Gale and Nova Weetman, for Timeslip Tuesday

For the first time in ages, after a few weeks of silence while I did home renovations tasks and moved hundreds of books, I actually have a review for Timeslip Tuesday! 

Elsewhere Girls, by Emily Gale and Nova Weetman  (May 4th 2021 by Text Publishing), is a switching places time travel story.  Fanny and Cat are both Australian girls who are competitive swimmers, but Fanny is swimming in 1908 (salt water, uncomfortable bathing costume, no goggles) and Cat in the present day (healthy diet, clean water, with a trainer).  Fanny is fiercely competitive, determined to win; Cat, with a swimming scholarship to a private school her parents can afford her to use, feels burned out.  

Then comes a day when the two girls time themselves with the same stopwatch....and swap places.  Both are bewildered, both want to keep swimming.  And both want badly to be home with their own families. Cat really does not like all the hard domestic labor of Fanny's life and the lack of modern conveniences.  Not even swimming swaps well--Fanny's best stroke, the trudgeon, is not one Cat knows...or that Cat's coach appreciates).  Fanny, on the other hand, appreciates many aspects of modernity, but misses her family, especially her sister, dreadfully.  

It's really good time travel, with both girls struggling to pass as each other and cope with the situation.  Happily, each finds in the other's little sister a friend and ally, and they don't mess thing up too badly for each other, though there are some close calls. When the inevitable happens and they switch back, they bring with them new perspectives and insights--it's not just time travel as tourism, but a growing up experience for both, with plenty of thought provoking depth alongside the fun of temporal culture shock.

But though it's an excellent pick for any time travel fan, it's especially, wonderfully (and obviously) good for time travel readers who are also swimmers!  Fanny is based on a real person--Fanny Durack, the first Australian woman to win a gold medal at the Olympics, and realizing that this is the future in store for her is lovely.

Dragon Realm books 1-3 by Katie Tsang and Kevin Tsang, for Timeslip Tuesday

In an unusual Timeslip Tuesday post, I have a series of three books to offer--the Dragon Realm series, by Katie Tsang and Kevin Tsang.  (nb: the dates I give are for the US publication).  

Four kids meet in China and begin the adventure of a lifetime in  Dragon Mountain  (November 2020).  They find the secret way inside a mountain of legend where four dragons have been trapped by powerful magic, and form heart bonds, pairing each kid to a dragon.  The dragons are made stronger by the bonds, and the kids gain powers of their own....and together this team might be strong enough to defeat the Dragon of Death, who will destroy both the dragon and human realms if she isn't stopped.

And to do that, in the second book, Dragon Legend (September 2021), the kids and dragons travel in back in time to the dragon realm, to face the Dragon of Death on her home turf and save one of the boys, who has been kidnapped....as well as various fantastical adventures in the dragon realm, there's a visit to the imperial palaces of ancient China that's a lovely bit of time travel goodness!

But the time slippiness of the series really gets going in book 3, Dragon City (April 2022) when the kids and their dragons are swept into the future that awaits if the Dragon of Death succeeds.  It's a horrible place, where the city is the only place where life persists, and but that life force is sucked up by the evil dragon queen to fuel her strength.  The kids are separated from their dragons, and one of the dragons has turned to the dark side, but nevertheless they persist, and with help from some unexpected allies, and an even more unexpected magical force, they overthrow the Dragon of Death and her horrible future is no more.  

The kids and their dragons (even the one who turned evil, who was redeemed) return to their own time....and both the dragon and human realms are safe once more.

So time travel isn't the point of the series (the point being brave kids bonded with dragons, magical powers, and evil to be conquered) but the time travel does work well to provide an interesting scaffolding for the plot and the world building. It is tremendously easy to picture the target audience loving the books lots (and wanting dragon bonds of their own!).  Happily for these readers, the adventures continue with afresh  with Dragon Rising and Dragon Destiny.

Short answer-- prefect for younger middle grade kids who want lots of maigcal action and adventure, but are not ready or willing to read large tomes, with bonus time travel to raise the stakes!

A Long Way from Home, by Laura Schaefer, for Timeslip Tuesday

It is always very welcome when a book gives me the unexpected pleasure of having time travel in it, because I am not a plan-in-advance person, and it is always touch and go ig I'll have a Timeslip Tuesday book.  A Long Way from Home, by Laura Schaefer (October  2022, Carolrhoda Books) gave me that pleasure, and the pleasure of a very good read as well!  

Abby is unhappily uprooted from home in Pennsylvania when her brilliant engineer mother gets a job with Space Now in Florida.  Now she has to add being a new friendless kid to the constant big worries about climate change and the state of the world that weigh her down.  Juliana, her school assigned mentor, is Friendly as all get out, but Abby still wants to just hole up in her new house, wanting to go back home....

But then she meets two strange boys, Adam and Bix.  They are strange not just in the stranger sense, but in off kilterness of clothes, language, way of being in the world....  They ask for her help--they are a long way from home, looking for their sister, V, and need a place to stay.  She's able to offer them her dad's boat, currently going unused.  Once they are settled there, the boys tell Abby more of their story.  They have come from about 250 years in the future, and they need to find V and get back before they through the timeline out of whack.

The boys' future tech give Abby a glimpse of the future, and too her great relief, all the problems of Earth in the present are solved.  She offers to help the boys, if they will take her forward to their time when they leave...and they sort of agree. 

So 2 future kids needing some tech help and food for a few weeks makes Abby's life busy.  Fortunately she has made contact with her Great Aunt Nora, a former space engineer herself who is now a recluse, and fortunately Nora agrees to help keep Adam  and Bix safe.  And in the end, Juliana the mentor now turned friend and even Abby's mom are all part of Operation find the missing sister and send the strangers back to the future....maybe with Abby, maybe not.

So much for plot synopsis.  I am now asking myself which part of the book I liked best--the realistic, character-driven part, or the sci fi time travel part....

The character part is hard to beat.  Abby isn't magically unanxious by the end of the book, and she still needs her coping mechanisms, but she is stronger, with a more mature perspective, and her character growth was truly moving.  She and her mother also open healthier channels of communication, which helps.  The supporting cast were all interesting too, and I loved the inclusion of Abby's mom and aunt reflecting on the challenges of being women in their field.  There are also puppies, courtesy of Juliana. 

And another small thing that sticks in my head--Great Aunt Nora, a recluse in a big old house, haunted by guilt after a mission she worked on failed, has taken up painting.  She is very bad at it, and knows this, but this does not stop her, because she wants to keep painting.  Possibly this is the most useful  'lesson' the book offers to its readers, and it  ties in with Abby doing small things to save the planet--obviously she won't succeed in any splendid way, but she realizes it is the doing that is important, even when the goal will never be reached.

The sci fi part provides impetus for action and tension, what with the ticking clock of the mission, technical difficulties, and secrets that the two boys aren't sharing.    There are very few books in which kids from the future come to visit, so this was a fun change for me. It was good time travel, too, and the out-of-placeness of the boys and their reactions to what to them was the distant past made for entertaining reading without feeling over the top.  There's a bit of mystery at play too.

Final answer--a really good book to have on hand when you are stuck at a car repair place waiting to find out how many hundreds of dollars you are about to lose.  I was engrossed, and moved, and even inspired/not quite dry eyed.....and I bet my reaction would have been much the same if I'd read it at the target audience age of 11 or so.

disclaimer--review copy received for Cybils Awards reading

Ripped Away, by Shirley Reva Vernick, for Timeslip Tuesday

Ripped Away, by Shirley Reva Vernick (February 2022, Fitzroy Books) is a great upper middle grade time travel book, perhaps even my favorite time travel book of the year so far.

Abe Pearlman is a lonely kid with a head full of stories and no friends.  He has a huge crush on Mitzy, whose also something of a loner, but can't manage to say hi to her.  On his way home from school one day, he sees a sign for a fortune teller, and unexpectedly finds himself curious enough to go inside.  The fortune teller asks him what he most wishes for, and he tells her he wants to be a more interesting person.  She then tells him  that someone is going to die, but that he can save that person.  And then he blacks out.

He comes too in a horse drawn wagon in Victorian London.  He is now Asher, who works for a jewelry peddler, and lives in a tenement with his impoverished mother.  All of Asher's life is there in his head.  Understandably, he is freaked out, and figures that maybe saving the life the fortune teller mentioned is his way home.  And then Jack the Ripper murders a woman just steps away from where he is standing with the horse and cart....

Back in the tenement, Abe finds that Mitzy has also travelled back in time...she too went to have her fortune told, and now she is a blind girl, Maya, his upstairs neighbor living with her mother and her uncle, a butcher.   Both kids are from Jewish immigrant families, and this is a bad time to be Jewish in London.

The city is roiled by the Ripper killings, and  Jews are being targeted as suspects.   Antisemitism is rampant.  The police are looking in Jewish homes for the knife used in the killings, and when Mitzy's uncle won't produce his butcher knives, he is arrested and considered guilty.  Abe sees this as a  chance to save a life, and is able to get the uncle to tell him where his knives are, and why he hidden them.  But Mitzy's way home is still unclear, and the longer the two kids stay in the past, the stronger the lives of Asher and Maya are becoming, starting to subsume their own identities....

The time travel plot (which gets very tense!) and the murders (off stage, but also tense) set up a gripping framework for the excellent character-driven story.  The friendship/nascent romance developing between the two kids is heart-warming, and although Mitzy has little agency (though she does bring her intelligence to bear on the situation), Abe demonstrates pleasing initiative and intelligence.  The sensory details and descriptions really transport the reader back in time as well, without slowing down the story.  It is a short book, only 118 pages, but it gets everything done nicely. There are very few Jewish time-travel books for kids, and so it's great to have this one, with its top notch cultural and historical details. 

disclaimer--review copy received for Cybils Awards judging.

You Only Live Once, David Bravo, by Mark Oshiro

I really loved The Insiders, Mark Oshiro's 2021 queer, magical, middle school story (my review).  So I was very happy when You Only Live Once, David Bravo (September 2022, HarperCollins), got nominated for the Cybils and was a time slip book--reading it was three birds (1 pleasure, 2 happy duty), with  two curled up sit-downs.  It is also a queer, magical, middle school story, but with time travel!

David Bravo and his best friend, Antoine, are starting middle school together.  But they are on different schedule tracks, and 15 minutes of lunch together, plus cross country practice, is all they get.   His first assignment also discourages him greatly--a presentation about family culture and heritage is fraught when you are adopted, and complicated when you are Latinx, your dad is Mexican Brazilian American, and your mom Japanese American.  And he feels he really messed it up.  But worst of all he causes Antoine to have an accident that keeps him from running.  Antoine's father is set on making him a world class runner, and now David has derailed this, and maybe ruined their friendship.

So all he wants to do is just lie on the floor at home forever, wishing he could restart middle school. 

His wish is granted, in the shape of an annoying talking dog who says she's been sent by the powers that be to help him undo whatever mis-step it was that wrecked everything.  Fea (which means ugly in Spanish), sets right to work.  But each do-over just seems to make things worse.

Then it occurs to Fea that maybe it's not the past that needs fix, but the future that needs saving. Fea wasn't always an pushy time travel guide--she was once a young woman, back in the mid 20th century, who blew her own future.  She takes David back in time to see it  happen--the day Fea couldn't bring herself to say yes to the love of the girl who was her own best friend, and ended up with a broken heart.  And maybe if David realizes he'll only live once, it will give him the courage to acknowledge a truth--that Antoine too is more than just a friend.

There was a lot that awfully sweet here.  David's parents are just the best in so many ways.  Fea, who annoyed me lots at first, became someone to care about.  And David and Antoine are loveable (grown-up perspective), and relatable (mg school kid perspective)--both are figuring out who they are, in Antoine's case being honest with his dad about not actually wanting to be a world class runner, and in David's case, questioning his identity as an adopted child).  And of course figuring out what they feel for each other.

Since this is a time slip Tuesday post, I feel compelled to note that the time travel was very satisfactory and coherent, and was made even more enjoyable when Antoine got included.  I liked the trip back to the far past of the mid 20th century best, because it was such a nicely contrasting use of Fea's abilities (and also because it was a fresh scene, that added depth to the story).

The ending has a surprising and joyful twist as an added bonus (although I thought it was perhaps a bit too much of a good thing....like extra frosting)

Thunderbird Book 1, by Sonia Nimr, for Timeslip Tuesday

Thunderbird, Book 1, by Sonia Nimr, translated by M. Lynx Qualey (April 2022 by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies UT-Austin, originally published in 2017), is the first time travel book originally written in Arabic I've ever read, and also the only Palestinian time travel book I've read.  My only substantive complaint with the story is that it is just the first part of a longer whole, with a cliffhanger ending. I wanted more, immediately...

A personal complaint is that the sadness with which the story begins made it hard for me to get hooked..  Noor's beloved parents died when she was 11, and for the past two years she has lived in the home of her uncle.  His wife is shrewish, greedy, and unkind, but fortunately her grandmother is there to give her all possible love and comfort, and one night gives her an old  ring from her parents....and then she too dies.

Noor runs away to visit an old family friend, a professor of antiquities, to try to find out more about the ring.  The ring is tied to her parents research--they were convinced that the phoenix was a real bird.  And they were not wrong.  With its death and rebirth every 500 or so years, the phoenix maintained the boundary between the human world and the world of the djinn and other magical creatures.  It is time for the phoenix to die again, but this time it might not be resurrected....and the balance between the worlds would be shattered.

 And Noor finds herself, accompanied by one of the djinn (who are also worried about the boundary falling), undertaking a quest through time to recover four feathers from the phoenix's past immolations.

Arriving in 16th century Jerusalem, she meets a girl who looks just like her, who has the same ring.  The two join forces to find the phoenix, and escape after being brutally captured by soldiers to make it just in time to see the phoenix burn....and this first installment ends.

I have left out many of the lovely fascinating elements of the story that made it a pleasure to read.  Though there are a few uneven bits, like Noor getting a lesson in the Crusader history of the city from her new friend (interesting, but something of an info-dump), Noor was such a clearly drawn character that she carried me through the story without faltering.  It was fascinating to go back in time with her, and also to see Jerusalem through her terrified, Palestinian eyes.  And if I ever time travel, I would, like Noor, to have a djinn in cat form going with me to magically provide appropriate clothes!

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."

Book 2 comes out this November, and I will be buying it.

Thunderbird is eligible for this year's Elementary/Middle Grade Cybils Awards.  Two other Muslim fantasies that have also not yet been nominated are Nura and the Immortal Palace, by M.T. Khan, and Amira & Hamza: The Quest for the Ring of Power, by Samira Ahmed.  If you know of others, please let me know!  And please consider nominating one of these books (here's where you go to do that), to uplift middle grade Muslim fantasy!

The House in the Waves, by James Hamilton-Paterson, for Timeslip Tuesday

A vintage UK time travel book this Tuesday--The House in the Waves, by James Hamilton-Paterson (1970).  This is time-travel through medically administered drugs (a first in my timeslip reading) that send Martin, a mentally-ill boy, to a late 16th century fishing village near the old manor house in East Anglia where he has been institutionalized. 

Martin. taken from his abusive father when he was six, and been in foster care and institutions ever since, has withdrawn almost totally from reality. He requires assistance with eating and bathing, and makes no effort to interact with anyone. Only his imaginings of ancient oceans and the fossil shells now on dry land are real to him.

But then he finds a handmade balloon (not a party balloon, but handmade with parchment like stuff pieced together) stuck in a tree, with a note attached from a boy pleading to be rescued from imprisonment in a tower. Martin's attention is caught, and so he journeys illicitly from the institution to find and help the writer of the note.

And he finds himself in the 16th century, in a fishing village about to walloped by a tremendous storm. Following a few leads from the (suspicious, but preoccupied) villagers, he comes to the ancient and crumbling house of a mad alchemist. Locked up in a tower by the alchemist, his uncle, is Will, who has been sending out messages on balloons he has made from the skin of mice.... As the storm hits, the alchemist's house collapse, and Will and Martin barely escape.

It was very good time travel, with Will's desperate predicament vividly described, and  a beautifully creepy, yet moving, picture of the crazed alchemist uncle. It is a transformative experience for Martin, who cannot help but be engaged in the trauma of it all.

But then he wakes up in his own bed back in the institution, not having left it at all. It was a dream, a Freudian dream that has cleared his mind, and he is no longer detached from reality.

It was very gripping, and I read it in a single sitting, but there is much that made me uncomfortable re mental illness and children suffering from it. The detail and care with which the fat body of another child who seems to have a development delay was unpleasant, for example. And then there's the magical healing of mental illness being cured through drug-induced time travel and a few pointed remarks from the doctor pointing out elements of Martin's story that resonate with his real life.....not a very satisfying conclusion for the modern reader.

On the other hand, the theme of oceans, and drowned shells, and the fishing village and alchemist's house devastated by waves, makes the story strangely cohesive.  The alchemy part was fascinating.  And it was pleasing to see Martin come out of his isolation, and I did read it in one engrossed gulp. Well worth the $5 I spent on it.

My Second Impression of You, by Michelle I. Mason, for Timeslip Tuesay

My Second Impression of You, by Michelle I. Mason (Sept. 20th, Bloomsbury), is a fun YA romance (and even upper Middle Grade readers) fueled by a very interesting time slip plot.

16 year old Maggie is sure that her perfect boyfriend, Theo, is going to ask her to prom when he suggests meeting up at a coffee shop, but instead, he breaks up with her.  Stumbling back to her car, she falls and hurts her foot.  Theo does nothing to help, but his best friend, Carson, who Maggie has never liked, is there and drives her home.

Maggie turns out to have broken a foot bone, and needs surgery, and her life, which centers around drama and dances, crashes down to mingle with the loss of Theo.  She wallows in self-pity.  So when she gets a text offering her the chance to revisit the best day of her life, she can't revisit, and installs the app.  She'll go back to the wonderful, giddy, fairytale day when she and Theo first met.

But this time around, the app keeps intruding, showing her the day from other points of view.  Her best friend has a secret that might ruin the love and trust between them.  Theo is not exactly the romantic hero Maggie had thought.  Carson is more than just Theo's unwelcome wingman.  And so Maggie is forced to think about things that in her self-centered way had never occurred to her....All that she missed the first time around pushes her into being a better, more aware person, and gives her the gift of someone much better than Theo....

The app doesn't deliver it all in one day, so Maggie's real time life keeps getting knocked out of kilter by bits of new information, making her character growth more believable.  She has to work hard to process and act on what she learns, and though the reader might want to shake her (she's isn't very likeable for the first half of the book or so), she does get there in the end.

Michelle Mason is the author of Your Life Has Been Delayed, another fascinating and thought-provoking YA time slip/romance (my review), and I appreciated the interesting twist on time travel she's come with here too.  Maggie was really in the past, and the app had to poke her to keep her from changing things, so it was more than just watching a movie. The app isn't explained at all, and I can't help wonder why Maggie was the chosen one....

It's a really fun premise, well delivered, and the developing romance was sweet.  It was a fast and absorbing read, with the bonus of me wondering what I would do if I were Maggie, and what day I'd want to go back to if I were Maggie....and what I might learn.