Posts on time travel

Thanks to my friend Amanda, who suggested the theme for my new junior high fiction display: time travel!

On display:
Nick of Time / Bell
London Calling / Bloor
The Return of Meteor Boy? / Boniface
Gideon the Cutpurse / Buckley-Archer
Charlotte Sometimes / Farmer
Jim and Me: A Baseball Card Adventure / Gutman
Found / Haddix
Sign of the Raven / Hearn
A Swiftly Tilting Planet / L'Engle
The Root Cellar / Lunn
Madigan's Fantasia / Mahy
Here There Be Dragons / Owen
Johnny and the Bomb / Pratchett
The Book of Time / Prevost
Black Powder / Rabin
Tanglewreck / Winterson

It's Timeslip Tuesday again at Charlotte's Library, when Charlotte reviews time travel fiction for kids and invites others to do the same! Today I'd like to talk about one of my favorite books from childhood: Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth, by Lloyd Alexander.

Jason is an ordinary boy with, he thinks, an ordinary cat named Gareth. Until, that is, Jason wishes aloud that he had nine lives and Gareth speaks up! Cats don't really have nine lives, Gareth explains, but: "I can visit nine different lives. Anywhere, any time, any country, any century." What's more, he can take Jason, too.

Thus begins Jason and Gareth's rather whirlwind sampling of world history from a cat's and a boy's eye view. From Egypt in 2700 B.C.E. to America in 1775, the two adventure across every inhabited continent. They confront emperors, march in battle, face imprisonment, and lollygag with Leonardo da Vinci.

Meanwhile, Jason—and readers—learn about cats' role in the various cultures they visit. Cats in ancient Egypt are revered; those in medieval Germany are feared as creatures of the Devil. Some places they're regarded as good luck, other places bad; sometimes they're treated with affection, other times detested.

Time Cat is an unusual, entertaining, and informative middle grade adventure, much more light-hearted than Alexander's Prydain or Westmark sequences. What's more, it gets away from Alexander's plot and character formulas that have caused more than one person to ask: Why did Lloyd Alexander write the same book over and over again? Take a peek!

Charlotte of Charlotte's Library is hosting a new meme she calls "Timeslip Tuesdays." She reviews children's and YA books that deal with characters slipping through time.

This week, Charlotte's review is on Edward Bloor's London Calling, and she kindly included a link to my review of Ghost Letters. I always loved time travel books as a kid; it'll be fun to see what Charlotte and other bloggers turn up!