Showing posts with label Timeslip Tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Timeslip Tuesday. Show all posts

3/12/24

The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison, for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip book is The Other Place, by Nancy L. Robison (1978).


Mine, happily picked up at a booksale, turned out to be a review copy (very cool to see the retro promotional info, shown below), but I don't think I'll send in two clippings as requested.

I'm making no effort to hold back on spoilers here with this whacky 1970s sci fi story for kids, so if you are a little kid who's never read any science fiction (which you aren't), go read the book and see if you agree with the two Goodreads readers whose first sci fi it was, and who loved it before I ruin everything.

The Other Place starts with Elena and her dad driving off to the house in the country (USA) where they are now going live, following the death of Elena's mom.  Things get weird, and Elena can't see the road behind them anymore, and her dad's stilted remarks don't do much to sooth her growing sense of wrongness.  The cabin is fine, and seems normal enough, except that Elena is woken up by strange noises, and goes off into the woods to see what's happening, and the townsfolk are dancing around in the middle of nowhere. 

A trip to the store the next day adds to the weirdness, when she sees the storekeeper has eyes filmed over with jelly...as do the kids and the teacher in the one room schoolhouse.  One kid, with mostly non jelly eyes, is friendly, lending her a horse to ride, but when she tries to ride her way out of the valley, she finds she can't.  She's stuck.

Turns out the townsfolk are aliens in a little bubble cut off physically and temporally from the rest of the world, her mom was one of them, and her dad has volunteered to help them fix their space craft so they can go home.  Happily for Elena, the friendly kid helps her get out of the valley, but her dad wants to go off with the aliens because he loves his dead alien wife more than he cares about his living kid (the book does not say it quite like this....).  And when Elena escapes after what felt like weeks away from the city, almost no time has passed, and her aunt is there to meet her....and her aunt has.....JELLY EYES!  The end.

The illustrations add a certain 1970s something to the story.




The paperback cover, if you are so lucky to be reading that one, adds even more.  





3/5/24

Anne Frank and Me, by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, for Timeslip Tuesday

Anne Frank and Me, by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld (1997), is this week's Timeslip Tuesday offering. It tells of a teenaged girl, Nicole, who's mind is full of stereotypical teen stuff, including pining over Jack.  Her diary thoughts of pining will perhaps be familiar to many readers who are, or once were, teenaged girls with their own hopeless crushes.  

At school, her history teacher is trying to explain the horrors of the holocaust, but it seems distant, and even Anne Frank's diary seems, according to the internet searches Nicole does, a possible fake....so she's not really interested in the class trip to the local "Anne Frank in the World" exhibit, except, of course, that Jack is going to, and maybe he'll want to sit with her on the bus...and he does!  but it turns out that he's actually interested in a friend of hers, and everything is horrible, and then there are gunshots, and everyone thinks is the strange goth-type boy shooting, and she falls and hits her head....

And comes to as a Jewish girl in German occupied Paris. 

She still is her American self at first, but very quickly she fades into the place of the girl whose life she is now living.  Things get worse and worse for the Jewish people of Paris, and she and her little sister end up in hiding.  But they are betrayed and sent on a hellish journey to a concentration camp.  Miraculously she actually meets Anne Frank, who tells her which way to go when they arrive, but the little sister goes the wrong way, Nicole follows, and they end up in a gas chamber.  And as she starts dying, she awakens in her own time again.

And it's not a shooting after all, it was a fireworks prank.

So this started off as a play, and I think this is why it doesn't quite work as novel.  Nicole's tone is very flatly matter-of-factly descriptive through all the horror she endures.  There's little emotion or introspection, and in general it's all told without much inner character development, which is possibly due to her not being herself anymore.  But still it's very gripping and impactful, and I stayed up late finishing it, and was moved by the hideous evil tragedy of it all...

,...with an extra coda of discomfort, not intended by the authors--this was written before the era of school shootings began in earnest with Columbine, and the fact that the shooting with which the time travel begins turns out to be a joke is pretty disturbing to a person reading it now.



 

2/13/24

Fair Bay, by Eleanor Frances Lattimore, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

A vintage time travel book this week-- Fair Bay, by Eleanor Frances Lattimore (1958).  All her life Trudy's grandmother has told her stories of Fair Bay, the South Carolina island where she spent her summers.  When Trudy goes to stay with her great aunt Gertrude at the family plantation house, she asks about the island, hoping to visit, but is told that it was washed away in a storm, leaving only a strip of sand with a few palmetto trees.  Her grandmother had told her of the storm, but wanted to talk more about happier times.  Millicent, the cook, who was also a  little girl on the island when the storm came, tells her how her great aunt Christina was almost lost to the storm when she went back to the house to look for her precious music box, but won't tell her much else about it, and Aunt Gertrude doesn't want to talk about it either.   

Though Fair Bay is still much in her mind, Trudy spends her days happily exploring on horseback (this is pleasant reading in a not very exciting way).  Then one day she wakes up early and decides to go riding before breakfast, and her horse gets a mind of her own and her down an old road she'd never seen before.

The road leads to the old causeway to Fair Bay, and the tide is low....so Trudy succumbs to temptation and crosses over.  Wandering the strip of beach, she finds the old music box, and slips through time.  The island is whole, with all its houses and its church, and the children are playing on the beach.  And Trudy watches the day unfold, seeing her aunts and other children playing on the beach (rather horrible, a group of them are digging up a turtle's nest) knowing what's going to happen to them in a few hours.

Though Trudy feels perfectly corporeally present, she can't be seen or heard.  This inability to interact with anyone back in the past dims the emotional intensity of the experience.  She's just a passive on looker, and though it's not uninteresting, it's also not nearly as interesting as it could have been.  I felt from the way the survivors won't talk much about the horror of the storm that there must have been some tragedy involved, but Trudy discovered nothing new, and I felt a bit cheated. In fairness, it's only 123 pages of generous font, written for younger children than me, but still.

I wish the date of the hurricane was made clear; I think it might well have been inspired by the Great Storm of 1893 which hit the islands of South Carolina coast hard, but it doesn't match exactly--that storm hit at night, and the coastal islands hit hardest were homes mostly to black families, not rich white ones....And reading about the Great Storm and its horrors, I'm even more disappointed about the cop out on Lattimore's part that no one in Trudy's time wants to talk about it.  It could have been a much more powerful book than it was.  Oh well.

In short, though I didn't mind reading it at all, and quite possibly would have loved it when I was a seven or eight year old horse loving Charlotte, it didn't hit hard for me reading it today.

Eleanor Frances Lattimore is best known for her Little Pear books, about a Chinese boy, written for younger children, which don't really seem like something I'd love. That beings said, and although this one didn't quite make me desperately want to read others of her books, I will certainly pick up any that come my way.  She is very good at describing, which I like, and I may well revisit Fairy Bay in memory (especially whenever I read about sea turtle conservation efforts....to their credit, the girls involved wanted to rebury the eggs so they could hatch, but the boys wanted to take them home, and of course these particular eggs were doomed anyway, but still).

2/6/24

Evie's Ghost, by Helen Peters, for Timeslip Tuesday

Evie's Ghost, by Helen Peters (2017, Nosy Crow), is a lovely English timeslip story, and it is firmly in the tradition of mid twentieth century British time travel, so if you, like me, who loves books like Charlotte Sometimes, Tom's Midnight Garden, and A Traveller in Time, you will enjoy it lots too and wish you'd had it as a child.  And if you are a child, there's no reason why you wouldn't find it magical and wonderful.

The story starts with Evie, very grumpy and sorry for herself, being packed off to stay with an old friend of her mother's, while her mother goes off on her honeymoon.  The old friend lives in an apartment carved from a once stately home, and it's a mess and there's no food, and Evie's mood does not improve.  But carved on the window glass of her small room is a message from the past:

Sophia Fane Imprisoned here 1814.

That night a ghostly girl appears outside the window, desperate for help, and Evie, reaching out to her, finds herself falling back in time.  Evie is now a lowly servant in Sophia's grand home, struggling with the hard and painful domestic labors required of her.  She knows she's there to help Sophia, who's about to be married off to a loathsome old, but very rich, man, and she's pretty sure she won't make it back to the present until she succeeds.  The big challenge of figuring out what to do and the pressing challenges of the drudgery of her life keep her occupied, and the reader gets a beautifully detailed slice of life for working children in the early 19th century that isn't a pretty picture.  And in the end Evie comes up with a brave and clever way out for Sophia, that's a risky gamble for herself.

It's not a story that gave me any flashes of numinous wonder, but it did absolutely keep me riveted. It's interesting historical fiction lived by a modern child, believably culture shocked, and with lots of tension both from the larger plot and in the specifics of Evie's life as a servant.   And it was a surprise treat at the end, when Evie arrives at her own home before her mother does and sets to work applying her hard-won domestic knowledge to getting the place ready to welcome her mother and stepmother home.  I feel it's rare for time travel to have such practical maturing effects on the young travelers, and found this refreshing.  And it was also lovely to see Evie back in the present finding the ending to Sophia's story, and her own personal connection to it.

So, in short, highly recommended, and I will keep a look out for more books by the author.


1/30/24

Magic of the Black Mirror, by Ruth Chew, for Timeslip Tuesday

Someday I will have read every juvenile time travel book of the 20th century (except the Magic Tree house books).  I won't necessarily have enjoyed them all (I feel that the ones that were really good rose to the top and stayed in print) but they will be read.  And it was in this completionist spirit that I just read Magic of the Black Mirror, by Ruth Chew (1990).  It was not a dislike of Chew's books that made me reluctant; they are fine fantasy of yesteryear.  It is that this particular one is time travel back to the precontact period Northwest Coast, and the experienced reader of vintage fiction knows that at best this will be uncomfortable, and at worst horribly racist and colonialist.  Fortunately for me, this turned out to be the former.

Amanda and Will are in a museum exhibit of Northwest coast art, when they see themselves in a strange black mirror.  Next thing they know, they've arrived in a Native village.  Happily, a Native boy, Fox-of-the-water, who befriends them.  Lots of time travel tourism ensues.  Amanda and Will are very interested in everything, are bothered by the enslaved workers captured from other tribes, are warm, comfortable and well-fed, and are a little anxious about getting home again.  They get home again.

It is a reasonable description of a generic Northwest coast community, superficial but not deprecating.  The one bit that I found interesting was the kids' interaction with the community's medicine man, who is set apart from everyone else because of his calling, and lonely as a result.  Though this is somewhat questionable, it was just about the only emotionally resonant bit of the time travel experience.  And I appreciated it that Chew did not treat the medicine man's work with contempt, but described it at face value.  

So I guess as an introduction to Northwest coast culture for younger readers written from an outsider perspective it's not terrible, but it's really not an interesting story.  Straight up time travel as tourism/educational opportunity. That being said, there is a slightly though-provoking time travel twist--the black mirror is an obsidian slab polished by the medicine man after he hears how the kids got there; and if he hadn't made it, they never would have come....

1/23/24

Time after Time (Best Wishes #3) by Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat for Timeslip Tuesday

 

If you are in the mood for a fun middle school ground-hog day timeslip, Time after Time (Best Wishes #3) by Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat (November 2023, Scholastic) is a great pick!  This series is built around a magic bracelet, passed on from girl to girl, and it arrives at Lucy's house in Fort Worth, Texas, on the day she most needs a magic wish!

Lucy's life (before this day) has been fine--she loves the days she spends with her mom and stepdad and the two little babies, but she also loves going to the calm of her dad's house, where she can count on every thing to be in its place (she likes order and control very much).  And she's really excited for her class field trip to the Natural History Museum, where her dad works. The first shadow comes when Ms. Brock, the school librarian, turns out to be a chaperone--she's dating Lucy's dad, and always seems to be harder on Lucy than she is on anyone else.  That shadow darkens when another kid pukes on her, and  Grace, her best friend and science fair partner, gets angry at her during the museum scavenger hunt (extra credit to the winners!) and Lucy can't see why she would be. 

And then the real storm hits when her dad proposes to Ms. Brock in front of her whole class, and she runs from the museum....

When the police find her and bring her home, the bracelet has come in the mail with a letter of explanation from the girl who had it before, who had made a wish on it that came true.  And Lucy is thrilled to make her own wish, to live this terrible day again but this time to do it right.  But she doesn't, and the magic sends her back day after day, with things not improving.  Lucy has to do some hard thinking about herself before the bracelet lets her day stick, but finally, with help from the two girls who had their own complications from the magic in the first two books, it does.

Some of the repeats are entertaining (especially for the target audience), like the struggle to avoid puke, and some are thought provoking, like the reasons for Grace to be angry with her, and her feelings about her father marrying again.  The clues she picks up each time around let these bigger issue get resolved realistically and though I wanted to shake Lucy a bit, the time travel was doing that for me so that was ok and it was good to see her take a hard look at herself!

It doesn't break any new ground for those of us who have read hundreds of time travel books, but it should be a hit with those who love the first two books, and especially for readers who love the idea of getting second (or third or fourth) chances to do things over.  And I might well pick up book #4--there's a mysterious antagonist trying to get a hold of the bracelet for herself, and I'm curious about her....


1/9/24

A Stranger Thing, by Ruth Tomalin, for Timeslip Tuesday

It is a lovely, and rather rare thing, to find a new-to-me author of vintage children's books that I can enjoy almost as much as young me would have. Since 2022, I have now read five of her books, and the most recent, A Stranger Thing (1975), a Christmas present this year, is my favorite. 

Kit, sent to boarding school for the first time when his mother must travel for work, is nervous at first, but gradually adjusts, making friends and enjoying the expeditions into the countryside.  But then a bully gets a hook into him, and plays him like a fish, making his life miserable.  Kit's old habit of sleepwalking resurfaces, and he wakes outside on snowy night, far from school.  Fortunately, he finds shelter in an old glasshouse on a nature preserve that had once belonged to a naturalist back (I think, though it's not clear) in the early 20th century.

It is a magical shelter, not just because it is built of glass.  Snowbound within it, he makes use of the generous stores (all things he loves to eat) that he assumes the preserve's warden had laid in, and is warm and cozy thanks to the stores of wood. He spends a lovely few days in this refuge, delighting in the company of birds and the resident mouse.  And it was a lovely bit of reading for me too, sharing this peace away from stress along with Kit.  

And Kit, given this peace, is able to see that he can extricate himself from the hold the bully had on him...and freed from that fear, he is free to leave the glasshouse.  He wakes in his own bed at school....and no one has missed him. The naturalist had shared his glasshouse as a refuge for others before Kit, and though it was destroyed years ago, it was there where and when Kit needed it...

I suppose you could argue that Kit's days in the glasshouse were a dream, but the author makes no suggestion of it.  The reality of the experience is unquestioned, which means it must have been a time slip, which fits more nicely with the history of the glasshouse as refuge.  My only complaint was that it was a short book; for instance, I'd have enjoyed more of Kit getting used to school (this happened at lightning speed) and more exploration of the countryside pre glasshouse to set the scene a bit more.


1/2/24

Crazy Creek, by Evelyn Sibley Lampman, for Timeslip Tuesday

Crazy Creek, by Evelyn Sibley Lampman (1948), tells how an Oregon girl named Judy patched up an old wooden boat and was swept down the titular creek back into the 19th century.  There she spent a year living with her great grandparents and their children (including her own grandfather, who had told her many stories of his youth that she was now living alongside him).  There are lots of details of 19th century life, pleasantly told, many small happenings and pleasures, lots of hard work and mud, and no financial or agrarian worries to disturb the peace. As an added bonus, it has one of the best 19th-century Christmases I can recall. 

It was really good time travel--Judy's family in the past was fortunately able to overlook and try to explain away all of Judy's nonsense, and she in turn was able to find a place in there where she loves and is loved.  A poignant note brings the book to a close, as Judy, reunited with her grandfather, very old and unwell, tries to tell him she's been back to his childhood.  "That's where I figure to go now," said Grandpa, and his eyes closed gently.  "I go there all the time, Judy."

The problem with mid-20th century books about time travel back to the 19th century frontier is that the depiction of Native Americans is almost always horrible.  And sadly, Crazy Creek, though not as bad as many, still manages to dehumanize the three Native Americans Judy meets. Though there are inklings that the kids are starting to have a more nuanced perspective, with Judy, for instance, starting to realize it's not fair that their land got taken from them, and a touch of compassion taking the place of fear and prejudiced distaste, it is still pretty awful and makes it hard. even impossible, to stay peacefully complicit in the happy family life that is otherwise such very pleasant reading.

12/19/23

The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, by Adrianna Cuevas

You might think that The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto, a middle grade fantasy by Adrianna Cuevas (April 2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is about ghosts on a ranch....but since this is my Timeslip Tuesday book, you can guess that actually it's time travel, not hauntings, creating fantastical mayhem (sorry for the spoiler!).  It is set on a ranch though, and so, very reluctantly, is the young protagonist.

Cuban American middle schooler Rafa (Raphael) and his best friends decided to take their fantasy adventure game to the next level, real life, and got busted when the school slushie machine they were absconding with breaks loose and crashes into the principal's car.  Rafa's dad skips all the regular punishments, and packs him off to spend a month working at a friend's ranch in New Mexico. Rafa is distressed about leaving his Miami friends, but even more worried about leaving his mother, who has cancer.  

But Rafa is a really good, cooperative kid, and soon he's learning the parts of a horse and getting to experience manure for the first time.  And there's a really cool girl his own age, Jennie Kim, the Korean American daughter of the ranch librarian. She too has a sadness-the recent death of her father.  But their growing bond is formed not just from shared sadness, but from their partnership in figuring out what's up with all the weirdness going on at the ranch (and a shared love of snacks).

A mysterious man in a green sweater keeps showing up...which isn't that odd. But Rafa being blamed for unpleasant mischief he had no part in is, and that's just the start of reality on the ranch going seriously off-kilter.  And when Rafa learns who the strange man is, and what he wants, he's faced with a desperately serious situation (spoiler--it involves time travel, and Rafa's mom....)

It's a truly engrossing story, and though there's sadness here the twists and turns make for entertaining reading.  Although it's a little distracting to think too much about the dad's questionable decision to keep Rafa from spending potentially precious time with his mother, the story more than kept my enthusiasm high. A secondary character, a veteran suffering from PTSD who looks after the ranch's horses, was a great addition to the ensemble, providing a grounding adult perspective.   And the mystery that need solving was very satisfying in a thought-provoking time travel way.

short answer--I liked it lots!


12/5/23

The Sky Over Rebecca, by Matthew Fox, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Sky Over Rebecca, by Matthew Fox (November 14, 2023, Union Square Kids in the US,  April 14, 2022, Hodder Childrens in the UK), is my favorite of all the new to me books I've read so far this year.  It was supposed to be last week's timeslip Tuesday, but when I was done reading it, instead of sitting down to review it, it was all too fresh and raw and sad in my mind (in a good way) for me to want to think cogently about it.

It's the story of ten-year-old Kara, a lonely girl living in Stockholm with her mother.  Although her beloved Grandfather lives close enough to visit often, which is a comfort, she has no friends, just bullies.  But one day looking out the bus window on her way to school, she sees a snow angel...with no footprints left by its maker.  And that is the start of a magic timeslip adventure, that leads her to Rebecca and her little brother Samuel, two kids living in hiding on an island in the middle of the frozen lake where she and grandfather go ice skating.  

Even Kara's great happiness about making a friend (and being the sort of person who can make friends, which she had worried about), doesn't mean she's not curious about the strangeness of Rebecca and her circumstances.  Gradually she realizes that Rebecca and Samuel slipped through time to hide from the Nazis, the only two from her family to escaped being murdered by them back during WW II.  Now Rebecca and Samuel, who can't walk, are stuck in their island hideaway, in the middle of the Swedish winter, in need of food and warmth, which Kara tries to provide (I liked that Kara's mother is able to help with this, concerned about situation but trusting Kara to do the right thing without trying to take over).  Even the boy who is the worst of the bullies is drawn into the mystery and becomes a good companion and helper (Kara grew tired of living in fear, and punched him, which tilted the balance of their relationship enough so that he, not redeemed but with a greater appreciation of Kara, can reshape their relationship).  

But she can't think of what she can do to help them move on....until Rebecca's prophetic vision of an airplane, from the Allies in the war, landing on the frozen lake comes true.  And oh my gosh do things take an utterly gut wrenching turn at this point, and I wept.  

It is utterly gorgeous time travel, of just the sort of magical slipping through the years that I love best. It's not just the two kids from the past here in the present, but enough of Kara slipping back to make the whole thing dreamlike and wonderful (and also gut wrenching).  It won awards over in England where it was first published, and I'm so glad I heard about it and got hold of a copy.  If you like Action and Adventure, it might not work for you, but if you want a story of a remarkable friendship between brave girls in a cold and snowy setting, with time travel that will remind you of old favorites (and some tense moments that I would count as action with a small a) do seek it out!

I would so dearly love to give it to my young self, who would have read it over and over, but am glad I haven't gotten so old as to not love children's books (even though I have so many on hand that I don't get to reread as much as I'd like...)




11/14/23

We the Future, by Cliff Lewis, for Timeslip Tuesday

We the Future, by Cliff Lewis (April 2023, North Star Editions), is a powerful story of a girl from the future working as a catalyst to start, one friend, one school yard conversation at a time, a flood of climate activism.  Don't be put off, as I almost was, by some climate change information dumping at the beginning, or by the pink spacesuit the girl, Sunny, from the future is wearing.  Stay of the growth of the movement and ride its wave toward hope.  

And on the way, watch Jonah, a kid with asthma so bad it could kill him, a lonely kid with no friends, find with Sunny's help how to use his voice and his gift for reading people to be a founder of a movement that will change Sunny's disastrous present a century in the future.  There's lots of good storytelling here, and it really builds and builds beautifully.  

The time travel aspect of the plot provides not just Sunny the catalyst but also two goons who have followed her back into the past to retrieve the time travel device they feel she stole from them. There are also, thanks to this device, little jumps into the recent past that pleasingly allow events to work out.  

All in all, very satisfying, and I was sincerely moved.  I'd be curious to know what actual young readers make of it--will they react with cynicism or zeal?  Possibly I will feal more cynical about this story tomorrow than I do right now, having just finished, but I did finish fired up....And that's all I will type, as my nose is very cold (the wood stove is in another room, and the heats not on.  Though I knew even before reading this that individual "green" actions aren't what's needed, I still grimly live in a cold house....).  

10/31/23

Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh, by Rachael Lippincott for Timeslip Tuesday

A YA sapphic love story for this week's Timeslip Tuesday--Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh, by Rachael Lippincott (August 29, 2023, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers).

Audrey is in a depressed holding pattern--dumped by her boyfriend and waitlisted by her dream school, the RI School of Design, she puts in the motions of working at the family corner store in Pittsburgh.  If she can send RISD the additional art they asked of her, maybe she'll get in, but she's not feeling any creative spark at all.  But then a regular customer, a curmudgeonly old man, sends her back to England in 1812.  Which turns out to be just the unsticking adventure she needs!

Back in 1812, wealthy and lovely Lucy is also stuck--her father is planning to marry her off to a much older man who is an awful piece of work.  Then Audrey pops into her life.  Lucy takes Audrey in hand, molding her as much as possible into a proper regency young lady, albeit one who's American upbringing can be used to try to explain all the bits of Audrey that refuse to be molded, and there are lots of these.  

Audrey figures out that she has 24 days in the past, and figures that she needs to find her spark again to get home.  So she casts around at the local eligible young men for love....  And Lucy, talking all this over with her new friend, yearns for a spark of her own.  

And then they realize it is each other that is making sparks fly....

It's a charming enough romance, and there's considerable humor in fish out of water Audrey back in 1812, and considerable sympathy evoked for poor trapped Lucy.  But the story didn't go beyond "charming enough" for me into any sort of moving, gripping reading experience.  It's pretty clear what's going to happen romance-wise, so it was more a waiting for the inevitable to happen than a what will happen next story.  Also the only Pride and Prejudice tie in was the time period, which disappointed me.  If you want a bit of escapism with two girls falling sweetly in love, and if you like your Time Travel to be a diverting bit of plot device, it will do nicely, but if you want more, not so much.

10/10/23

Vivian Lantz's Second Chances, by Kathryn Ormsbee for Timeslip Tuesday

Today's Timeslip Tuesday, Vivian Lantz's Second Chances, by Kathryn Ormsbee (middle grade, June 2023 HarperCollins) is a Groundhog's Day style repeating the same day over and over again.  In this case, Vivian is stuck repeating the first day of  8th grade.  And her track record of truly horrible first days is not broken by the many misfortunes that befall her, with every do-ever day bringing fresh distress.

Vivian isn't thrilled about starting 8th grade without her best friend Cami who has moved away.  But she's determined to do it right, and so she writes a to-do list in her new journal to help her have a great experience.  She does not.  Slipping in the mud, accidently bringing a bag of dog poop to school, destroying the class fish tank, and getting her first period (and first period stain) in the cafeteria at lunch is just some of what happens.  

And when she wakes up the next day, she gets to do it all again (but this time without the poop and with a pad...)  She starts figuring out some of the social dynamics that she'd missed before--the boy she was crushing on is a jerk, the queen bee girl is a viper, and Gemma, who used to be tight in that circle of friends, has had enough of them, and is (maybe) ready for a new friend....as of course is Vivian.  Maybe even more than just friends.... (though there is explicit attraction, it is not acted on, which makes sense because although Vivian gets to know Gemma through 8 or so days, Gemma keeps meeting Vivian for the first time....)

But there's more going on in Vivian's life than just school. That first day is when her 17-year-old brother leaves with no warning, to go off travelling with his band. She and their dads have to somehow come to terms with this; Vivian feels angry and abandoned.  So a few of her repeat days are spent with her brother as her main focus, which is a nice change from middle school awful-ness, and she tells her brother what's been happening to her, and though he has no answer about how to stop the time loop, he does give her food for thought.

Back at school, Vivian keeps messing things up in her quest to have a perfect first day, and is getting fed up.  She tells her best friend Cami all about it, and Cami's insights blend with her brother's.... Instead of trying to have a Perfect Day, Vivian is going to simply live it authentically.  And miraculously, that works!  It isn't, in fact, a perfect day, but it's far from being a disaster.

So reliving a horrible 8th grade day is not exactly fun reading, but it was fun seeing how things played out differently each time. The magic is explained more or less satisfactorily, and the ending is such that there's a teasing though that it might come into play again, which I'd be up for!   And though I wanted to shake Vivian at times, I was glad she was able to do some quick growing up.  I'm sure this will resonate with many of its target readers, and perhaps even give them food for thought as well.

Glad to have a new one to add to my LGBTQ middle grade fantasy list!  (as well as Vivian's crush on Gemma, who is explicitly identified as gay, there are Vivien's two dads, a nice discussion she has with one of them about how he realized he was gay, a brief reference to how they weren't allowed to marry for years, and Vivian's own reflection that she didn't have to choose either/or boys/girls).

NB.  This one has been safely nominated for this year's Cybils Awards, but there are lots and lots of great books still waiting to be picked.  Please show a book the love it deserves by nominating it before the deadline at the end of the day on the 15th!  Here and also here are some (though by no means all) of the books you could pick, and here's where you go to nominate.

10/3/23

White House Clubhouse, by Sean O'Brien, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

Today's Timeslip Tuesday book is White House Clubhouse, by Sean O'Brien (middle grade, October 3, 2023 by Norton Young Readers). It's fun time travel with engaging young travelers on a wild train ride, but it also makes a powerful point about the need to be good stewards of our natural resources for the sake of future generations.

Marissa and her little sister Clara are proud of their mother, the new president of the United States, but life in the White House is more constricting than they'd like.  But then they find a hidden tunnel leading to an underground clubhouse full of mysterious old stuff, and an invitation to join the club of White House kids....and they sign it.  They are whisked back in time to the White House of 1903, where Teddy Roosevelt's kids are up to all sorts of shenanigans.  It's a fun break from real life for the two modern girls, but when they want to go home, they find they are stuck.  The invitation they signed requires them to make a difference of some kind before they can go back to their own time.

When Marissa learns of plans afoot to bring industry and progress to the western states, at the expense of the natural world, including the giant sequoias, she decides that stopping this environmental destruction is the change she wants to make. So the sisters, aided, abated, and encouraged by Quentin and Ethel Roosevelt, stow away in the luggage traveling with the president on his whistle stop train tour out to the west coast.  Four kids can't stay hidden in luggage forever but playing poker with the press corps and avoiding other, less friendly grown-ups won't save the sequoias...(though this is the aspect of the book that will most please readers here for "having adventures on trains")

But Alice Roosevelt, Teddy's oldest daughter (the one with the green snake, Emily Spinach) also snuck onto the train, and she gives Marissa advise that will help her bring Teddy back on track to being the defender of natural beauty that is his best legacy.  It's very nicely done--the tension is great, the actions of the kids and the ways they effect change gripping and believable.  Young (and even old) environmentalists will be inspired.

Time travel is primarily a plot mechanism; the modern girls are of course put out by the uncomfortable clothes of yesteryear, but the cultural/linguistic/technological differences aren't really the point.  And since the Roosevelt kids know the sisters are time travelling, they are able to smooth over difficulties.  That being said, the time travel, especially toward the end of the book, does loop in some emotional resonance that adds to an already kid-empowering story.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

NB--White House Clubhouse is among many fine books eligible for this year's Cybils Awards in the Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative fiction category (books published in the US/Canada for kids between Oct 16 2022 and Oct 15 2023).  Show your favorite kids/YA books love!  Nominations close October 15.  Read more here  #CYBILS2023 Public Nomination Period



9/26/23

Rewind, by Lisa Graff, for Timeslip Tuesday

Despite not having finished preparing the talk I'm giving tomorrow (on shipwrecks and archaeology, which I've done before but it needs work), I'm here with a Timeslip Tuesday both again!   And it's a fun one--Rewind, by Lisa Graff (August 22, 2023 by Philomel Books).  

An annual highlight in 12-year-old McKinley's hometown is the Time Hop--everyone dresses up in clothes from the chosen year, and parties to that year's music.  It's about to be Time Hop 1993, and McKinley works hard on her outfit.  But the happiness of the day is spoiled when her father tells he she has to stay home to look after her grandma, who had a stroke a while back.  She sneaks out anyway to join her best friend Meg, but they have a falling out.  And then her father shows up in the middle of the party to drag her home.  But that's not all--McKinely, devastated, rushes away...and travels back in time to the real 1993!

It's the same town, and she's quickly befriended by Meg's mom.  Her grandmother hasn't yet had her stroke, and her dad and Meg's dad are two utterly obnoxious pests.  She and Meg's mom join forces to try to figure out how to get McKinley home--does she have to change something?    Like, perhaps, make the two dads less obnoxious so that Meg stands a chance of being born, and McKinley's own home life is more pleasant?  And some research in the library (microfiche ftw) results in the two girls learning that others in the town have travelled back in time as well- adding an interesting twist to the puzzle of getting back to the present.

(Meg's mom is just the sort of new friend one wants to make when time traveling!  She accepts the situation, is tremendously helpful, and very practical, keeping McKinley safe and fed).

It's fun, and I'm sure the target audience will love all the details of 1993, and be taken aback, as McKinley is, at some of the cultural nuances of that long ago time  (including more overt misogyny and racism than kids today maybe, I hope, experience).  There's some food for thought gently folded in, like this quote-“Not mentioning the bad stuff, doesn’t make it go away,” McKinley had explained. “It just makes it so kids like us don’t know what really happened. And talking about the awful stuff doesn’t mean you can’t talk about the good stuff that happened that year, too.” (pp 150-151).  And there's a subtle but strong message that changing other people isn't the way to solve problems.

It wasn't quite a book for me, as I have no interest in the 1990s, and didn't much like the characters (especially the two boys, who I found unbelievably horrid), but still I read it with enjoyment.

9/5/23

The Named, by Marianne Curley, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Named, by Marianne Curley (YA, Bloomsbury 2002), is a Timeslip Tuesday book that has been sitting on my (very large) main tbr pile for years, and even when I decided that yesterday its time to be read had come, I was kind of doubtful for the first third or so.  Happily, it started zipping along nicely, and I stayed up late finishing it. 

It starts with the horrible murder by monster of four-year old Ethan's beloved big sister, which he sees happen.  And then we jump to high school Ethan, still traumatized, with dysfunctional parents, and learn that Ethan was taken in by a society of guardians, who (with the help of a pantheon of mysterious deities who don't do much in terms of direct action) fight the forces of chaos trying to rip apart the past to make more chaos.  So Ethan is one of the Named, as they are known, and he's doing well in his time travel missions, trained by a purple-eyed 600 quasi-magical dude....and he reaches the next step in guardian advancement--he assigned an apprentice.

(me reading--not yet sure I like the book)

And the new apprentice is his ex-best friends little sister, Isabel.  So there are some real world problems, but Isabel takes to being one of the named like a fish to water, and it's clear to the guardians that Ethan and Isabel are part of an ancient prophecy, which, when we finally get to see what it says, is both confusing and somewhat pointless, and why did they have to make a difficult and dangerous journey to a magical underground chamber to read it when writing things down is a thing  (? I could have missed the point, or possibly several points.)

But Ethan and Isabel also time travel, and I liked their missions (saving Richard II and young Abaigail Adams from the chaos operatives, including the sister killer monster, trying to snuff them).   It's pretty easy time travel, where clothes and language and backstory problems are all taken care of (although I think they should have been sprinkled in grime instead of having new nice pretty clothes every time), but it was satisfying on the whole.

 And then everything gets very existing as new characters from the real world are brought into play and there's a big show down with sister killing monster and his gang, and I was reading very vigorously.

So I guess I like the book (with the exception of the prophecy and Isabel's romantic yearnings for purple eyed, 600 year old dude, which moved me not at all), and I rated it four stars on Goodreads for keeping me up late. And I have the next two in the series, and they may well show up here some Tuesday in the future....But there's a lot of flashy premise and not quite enough careful subtlety of story and character development to make me want to reread it--I'm don't think I'd get more out of it a second time through, which is how I feel with a book I am certain I like.



8/29/23

A Dreidel in Time, by Marcia Berneger, for Timeslip Tuesday

A Dreidel in Time, by Marcia Berneger, illustrated by Beatriz Castro (2019, Kar-Ben Publishing), is a short (88 pages) chapter book that tells the story of Hannukah through the eyes of two American kids who travel back in time to live through it, helping the Maccabees in their fight. When we first meet Devorah and Benjamin, their minds are preoccupied with the thought of Hannukah presents, and when their grandparents give them a large old dreidel instead of shinning expensive new gifts, they are disappointed.

But the dreidel is magic, and when they spin it, they are transported back in time, and find themselves in the community of the Maccabees, who are getting ready to escape the religious persecution of Syrian ruler King Antiochus.

The time travel is rather easy--they find themselves dressed appropriately and speaking Hebrew. Though they quickly make friends with other kids, it's a bit of a challenge getting the community to trust them. But it's important that they do, because what the kids remember about the Hannukah story is crucial to making sure it happens as it's supposed to. The dreidel spins again, and the kids find themselves a few years further on in the story, and again, until the final spin take them home again.

It's an interesting and entertaining read, though the teaching the story part (and the there's more to the holiday then presents moral lesson) overshadows the time travel and character development parts, and the dialogue was a bit awkward at times. But the illustrations add charm, as do the elephants, and it was a very entertaining way to learn more about a story I didn't know that well. 

8/22/23

Beadbonny Ash, by Winifred Finlay, for Timeslip Tuesday

Oh the pleasure and excitement of finding a new to me vintage time travel book by a new to me author! Beadbonny Ash, by Winifred Finlay (1973), started out very promisingly indeed--with three children (two siblings, boy and girl, and one visitor) and an older brother studying medicine, out in the Scottish countryside...They are all quickly characterized, and it's clear that Bridie, the visiting child, is badly traumatized by a past tragedy and having a hard time being part of family life, and then, suddenly and strikingly, Bridie hears strange music, and 

"Slowly, almost against her will, she left Kenneth, walked up to the crest of the hillock, and there, in the hollow, she saw them." 

The them are a crone singing in gaelic and playing the harp, and two men, in strange clothing, staring down at a third man, lying still.  The crone switches to English, with a sound of calling that begins thus

"We call from the star-heart of Dunadd
We call the Healer from the Unborn Years"

and the reader knows they are in for a nice timeslip back to the ancient past of Scotland.

And then there was a bit I enjoyed about the family and Bridie travelling to the family's summer cottage on the island of Mull, and we get some nice Scottish island and some good tension between Bridie, with her troubling tendency to retreat into fantastical imaginings of her dead father, and the other kids.

Then the time travel kicks in for real.  All four kids travel back to the 6th century, where the three youngest of them slot into the roles existing persons in the kingdom of Dunadd, retaining at first dreamlike memories of their own time.  The oldest, training to be a doctor, boy, stays himself and is faced with the nightmarish task of healing the badly wounded prince.  And since he still has all his memories of his own time, this is very good medical time travel.

But things go badly south for me after this.  Bridie becomes the sole pov character and in her aspect of living Dark Ages goddess (believing she had magic powers and was the most important person around), she wasn't as interesting a character to me as troubled modern Bridie was.  She becomes immersed in the tensions of the past, with no memory of the present.  And what I find most interesting in time travel is the tension between the two, I was both resentful and disappointed.  Even the looping around of her experiences in the past to starting to heal her troubled mind in the present wasn't enough to make past and present work in tandem for a better story.

There were moments of interest, beauty, strange Celtic magic, and character development, and it is so easy to imagine it being one I really loved.  And Finlay does a fine job bringing Dark Age Scotland to life, and I appreciated Saint Columba showing up and adding a bit of Pagan vs Christian tension--old gods giving way to the new and all that.  If the time in the past had been presented to me, somewhat expanded, as a book on its own, I would probably have enjoyed it.  

But it wasn't, and so I am a bit reluctant to spend more money on Finlay's books because what if this sort of bait and switch is something she does in all of them?  (that being said, the The Castle and the Cave, which isn't time travel, looks very appealing, but at $728, is not obtainable at this time....)


8/15/23

Whisper Falls, by Elizabeth Langston, for Timeslip Tuesday

 

A YA romance for this week's Timeslip Tuesday--Whisper Falls, by Elizabeth Langston (2013).  Out mountain biking in the North Carolina woods, Mike sees a girl in strange clothes standing behind a waterfall.  Susanna is an indentured servant in 1796, bound to a cruel master.  Susanna and Mike discover they can cross through the waterfall to each other's time, and as Mike learns about Susanna's harsh life and researches what happened to her and the family she serves, he becomes desperate to save her.  And he does, bringing her back to the present, which is where this first book of their story ends.

Most of the story takes place in the past; and basically, it is historical romance, with lots of good details and descriptions of the past.  The time travel adds some additional interest, though Mike has too easy a time passing in the 18th century (language, for instance, isn't a problem, though idioms are different).  I was much more interested in Susanna's reactions to the modern world, which is a story that continues in the next book, A Whisper in Time.  

Short answer--it was fine, but not quite my personal cup of tea--a kind of boring boy saves a more interesting girl from a predictable situation thanks to a magical waterfall and they are in love. I had trouble caring as much as I knew I was supposed to, and the central conflict was so predictable there was no tension.  If I had lost the book halfway through reading it, I wouldn't have cared over much.  

7/18/23

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.

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