Timespinners [Hardcover]

Luli Gray (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Allie and Fig wish they were anywhere other than New York, where their mother lies in a hospital bed in a coma. One morning, with Pa acting like a pod person and Aunt Bijou trying out some sort of hug therapy, the twins escape across Central Park to the American Museum of Natural History. Sometimes the dioramas there seem so real that the animals look alive, the trees so green one can almost smell them. In a room they’ve never been in before, they discover the Lynx scene, its diorama depicting the same European forest where their mother had her accident. The twins start spinning and then, dizzily, they jump. Instead of feeling the cold, hard glass of the diorama, they hear birds, feel sunlight. Suddenly they are in the forest. But when are they there? And how can they get home again? It’s scary, but maybe, just maybe, the twins can change the past so that the horrible cave-in never happens, so their mother is fine again, and the bad, sad, mad time never comes at all. The carousel of time keeps spinning, and Allie and Fig must put together the clues and follow their hearts back through the past to Mim and Pa and Aunt Bijou.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-Ten-year-old twins Allie and Fig Cadwallader-Newton are spending the summer with their Aunt Bijou while their archaeologist parents work in France. Suddenly, their mother is caught in a cave-in and flown home in a coma, which drags on through the summer and into the Christmas season. The twins go to school in New York City, occasionally amusing themselves at the Museum of Natural History. On one of their visits, they inadvertently spin themselves right into one of the dioramas in the Hall of European Mammals and find themselves transported back to France in 1913 on a collecting expedition. When they try to get home, things only get worse, as they spin themselves further back in time to Paleolithic France, caught between a mammoth herd and a tribe of Neanderthals. To their amazement, one blue-eyed boy speaks some English (explained later in the story), and is able to help them survive and eventually get home. Allie narrates the story but each chapter is followed by one of Fig's journal entries, complete with drawings and diagrams. The twins marvel at seeing mammoths and Neanderthals in the flesh, but also describe the dirt, discomfort, and sometimes disgusting food sources they are forced to accept. Willing suspension of disbelief is required to accept the brief explanation of the time-travel phenomena, but readers will empathize with the twins and their difficulties and triumphs, enjoy their firsthand look at Stone Age society, and share their surprise and delight at the final resolution.
Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-6. The author of Falcon's Egg (1995) presents another fantasy set in New York City. Twins Alice (Allie) and Thaddeus (Fig) Newton are visiting the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History when they are suddenly transported back in time to 1913 France. They attempt to return to the present, but end up spinning backwards to 35,000 B.C.E., where they meet a Neanderthal boy named Oomar, who is in training to become a shaman. Though the children discover how to return to the present, the twins are reluctant to go because the help they'll need from Oomar may cause his death. Gray carefully clarifies the fictions and fantasies (such as telepathy among Neanderthals) of her story, and the tale works well as an adventure. But the effects of the time travel are somewhat confusing: Allie and Fig originally want to go back in time to change the past (and prevent their mother's coma-inducing accident), but it's never clear how or why the twins' actions ameliorate her injuries. That aside, children will enjoy this fast-paced, entertaining story. Kay Weisman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; First Printing edition (April 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061816412X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618164127
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,492,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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