Charlotte Sometimes (The New York Review Children's Collection) [Hardcover]

Penelope Farmer (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 20, 2007 | Age Range: 9 and up | Series: The New York Review Children's Collection

A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense.

It's natural to feel a little out of place when you're the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she's baffled: everyone thinks she's a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare's. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. Her teachers think she's slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. If she doesn't figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On her first morning at boarding school, a girl wakes up to strange new surroundings in this haunting fantasy. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"An intriguing fantasy."—The Horn Book

"...a book of quite exceptional distinction...the author has built a haunting, convincing story which comes close to being a masterpiece of its kind...not easily forgotten."—Christian Science Monitor

A "haunting fantisy." —Publishers Weekly

"Farmer writes with style. She is vivid in her depiction of place: on almost every page, scattered with colorful figures of speech, we are drawn into the school and the surroundings of the school through sights and sounds and smells and textures...above all we are moved by the depth and poignancy of the relationship between Charlotte and Emily."—Eleanor Cameron

"This year's most haunting fantasy."—The Sunday Times

"Farmer is always gifted in her grasp of possibilities that bring us up short with surprise and delight and satisfaction."—Eleanor Cameron

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: NYR Children's Collection; First Edition edition (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172213
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172216
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.8 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars why did they change the ending? January 31, 2004

By Alison

Format:Paperback

I read this in the hardback edition when I was a teenager. I loved it so much that when I saw immediately bought it when I saw it on sale as a paperback. What a disappointment! The last chapter was altered so the ending was different. I even got out the original hardcover from the library to check that I wasn't remembering incorrectly - but sadly it was true.

While the new version is very good, it just isn't the same as the original.

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Charlotte Always June 2, 2001

By Kali

Format:Paperback

**************INCLUDES SPOILERS***************************

I actually read this book when I was a young teen and I have to admit I was only reading it because there was nothing else to read in the house and the telly was on the blink. I absolutely loved it from beginning to end. This is a time-travel story with a bit of a twist.

Charlotte Makepeace is a new girl at an old boarding school. On her first night she goes to sleep in her bed and in the morning she wakes up as Clare Moby, a schoolgirl from over forty years ago. Of course Charlotte is confused, even more so when people don't realise that she is not Clare, not even Clare's younger sister Emily.

Somehow she struggles through her first day as Clare but to add to her confusion she finds herself back in her own time the following day and no one has missed her! Charlotte soon realises that Clare is taking her place in her time and she is taking Clare's. The two girls muddle through by communicating through Clare's diary, leaving each other notes and messages in order for them to survive in their swap-over worlds.

However it's not long before Clare's younger sister Emily realises that something is wrong and Charlotte is forced to tell her the truth. With Emily as an ally, Charlotte's time in the past is a little easier but there is a dark cloud on the horizon. Clare and Emily are going into lodgings outside the school and the children have worked out that the time travelling that they are experiencing has something to do with the bed they sleep in and the tree outside the window which exists only in Clare's time....

This is an exciting story that moves at a fair pace, even more so when Charlotte is trapped in the past, forced to become a day pupil and temporarily forfeit her real life in the future.

Charlotte's identity is soon in question even to herself. Is she Charlotte or is she in fact Clare? Only Emily constant nagging about trying to get the real Clare back keeps the young girl aware of whom she really is.

Charlotte experiences life in England during the First World War. What once was history for her becomes the present, and she suffers with her new friends, as they loose loved ones to foreign battlefields, and face the terror of air raids in the middle of the night.

Charlotte's eventual permanent return to the future is not without its own problems but luckily Clare had her own ally in the form of Elizabeth, a dorm mate who like Emily realised that Clare was not Charlotte and helped her as best she could.

Charlotte's return to the future is not with out a tragic price. Clare, Charlotte finds out died not long after her return to the past, from flu and for a while Charlotte is grief stricken. However redemption comes in the form of a parcel of memories from a now grown up Emily who has waited many years to contact her sister's fellow time traveller in the future.

"Charlotte Sometimes" is a surprisingly dark children's novel with flashes of colour and inspiration as two young girls live lives that are not their own.

It is a poignant story about the loss of those we love and how we have to carry on no matter what. A surprisingly mature book that can be read by both older children and young adults alike. Read more ›

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A review of the book "Charlotte Sometimes" August 23, 2005

By Gillian Buchanan

Format:Paperback

This is a superbly written children's book from the late 1960s and republished in the 1990s. There is plenty of mystery and you never quite work out why Charlotte is mysteriously transposed in time back to the first world war until the last few pages. I think it's one for slightly older children, perhaps around 10-13, as there are many elements in it around the history of the 1914-18 war which the imaginative teacher could include in class lessons.

It's a great read and I found it difficult to put down, coming back to it fresh after last reading it in my own childhood.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars IDENTITY CRISIS: CHARLOTTE ALWAYS? May 24, 1998

By Plume45

Format:Hardcover

This book has remained one of my favorite YA novels which I discovered as an adult, after the explosion of YA literature in the 60's (too late for my childhood!)

Now any Time Travel book involves careful detailing by the author in advance, to establish the Laws of time travel and avoid anachronisms. How is the protagonist transported back and then forward again in time? (In this case the vehicle is a bed in a girls' dorm.) Must she go back far enough in time to preceed her own birth or can she witness herself at a younger age? Is she allowed to interact with her own ancestors or try to change national or even family history? Can she actually change places with a real person from the Past or merely fit in as an unknown entity in another age? What happens to the person from the Past who is suddenly placed in a modern settting? Won't people in the Past and the Present realize that they are dealing with imposters? Do they look and sound that much alike?

Heavy problems to resolve, but Penelope Farmer handles them all with grace and skill, leaving hardly any loose threads. Her heroine, Charlotte, attends a boarding school where she is pleased but puzzled to be taken under the wing of a kindly older girl--whose mother had asked her to be a special friend to Charlotte, if she ever met her. All throughout the story we keep wondering which of the girls she meets in the Past will turn out to be this sympathetic mother.

Charlotte is trapped on an endless temporal seesaw, never knowing in which Time (40 years' difference) she will awaken. She and her alter-ego, Clare, are doomed to never meet face to face, yet they each learn much about the other. I admired their ingenuity in keeping a mutual journal and hiding notes in the hollowed bedpost.... But why does Charlotte allow the girls in the Past to accept her as Clare; she does not protest that they mistake her for someone else. She lets the girls of the Past claim her as their own, which gradually erases her true, contemporary persona. Is she so diss! atisfied with herself and her life that she is willing to become someone else? Will she be destined to remain forever in the Past as Clare? Does she lack the will and desire to preserve her true identity? Will she ever become Charlotte Always? A Fabulous tale which will enthrall and mystify the reader! Read more ›

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: Review by Ellie Reasoner contains a major spoiler! September 18, 2005

By Kazel

Format:Paperback

Although it is very interesting and well-written, do not read her review, unless you do not mind finding out major aspects about the book's ending.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A book you can read year after year December 29, 2000

By Natalie

Format:Paperback

I read this book years ago, but it still stays in the forefront of my mind. Recently its been stronger than ever thanks to a friend of mine who loves The Cure. Charlotte goes back and forth through time. living her life, and someone elses. She's only Charlotte sometimes, as the title dictates. The story is eerie, but fascinating, Charlotte makes friend with her 'sister" who is not her sister, but the sister of the girl whose life she sometimes lives. She has to keep this fact a secret, and the plot gets deeper and deeper. The end of the book shocked me with the emotion I felt, especially the revelations that comes at the end. It's sad, bittersweet and lovely all at once, this is the kind of book I would keep forever.