Turnabout [Hardcover]

Margaret Peterson Haddix (Author), Cliff Nielsen (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

"It isn't natural for you to be younger than your great-grandchildren. We messed around with nature, and we shouldn't have."

Melly and Anny Beth both lived normal lives throughout the twentieth century. But in 2000, when they are old and ready to die, they are selected to participate in Project Turnabout and are given an injection to make them grow younger. At some point these participants are to receive another injection, which will stop the unaging process.

But everyone who receives the second shot dies.

Now, in 2085, Melly and Anny Beth are both in their teens and living on their own. They know they will need someone to take care of them when they grow too young to care for themselves. Time is running out.

In this spellbinding race against time, award-winning author Margaret Peterson Haddix explores a scientific experiment gone wrong, and the morality of immortality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her thought-provoking science fiction adventure, Haddix (Just Ella) successfully shuttles readers between three different eras, convincingly covering the extensive life of Amelia (Melly) Hazelwood. At age 100, Melly and other Riverside nursing home residents were injected with the experimental drug PT-1 The drug was supposed to make them "unage" until they reached a self-determined ideal age, at which point they would get another shot to stop the process. The second shot, however, proved deadly, and the participants of Project Turnabout were doomed to unage until they reached zero. Now teenagers, Melly and her stubborn sidekick Anny Beth need to find parents who can care for them in their approaching infancy. But when a snooping reporter begins to track Melly, the pair must put their search on hold and flee. Haddix handles this complex plot with ease, beginning the various entries either just after 2000 or in 2085 (with flashbacks in between). Readers will likely enjoy Haddix's predictions for the future (Perfect Toothpaste replaces dentists and cars drive themselves). The reporter's transformation from hard-nosed to maternal seems a bit sudden, but Haddix keeps the pacing smooth and builds up to a surprising final face-off. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10-Eighty-five years ago, Melly and Anny Beth were old women participating in a highly secret research study that reversed the aging process. However, the directors of Project Turnabout couldn't halt the reversal, and the women have "unaged" back into teenagers. Soon they will become so young that they will no longer care for themselves. Even worse, a reporter's interest in Melly is threatening to destroy the privacy that the teens alone still value in the publicity-mad culture of the year 2085. The suspense is unflagging as the two flee from unwanted exposure and search for a way to live out the rest of their days. The futuristic setting, including the consensual media circus of daily life, is scarily believable. The girls are well drawn, distinct characters, their teenaged selves logical extensions of their adult personas with one important difference: Melly and Anny Beth have learned from the mistakes of their "first lives" and accomplished more the second time around. The novel ends with the suggestion that longer life might be a blessing, an unusual perspective in science fiction and fantasy for young people, where extreme longevity is often depicted as a burden. Recommend this one to fans of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook, or pair it with Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting (Farrar, 1975) for a thoughtful discussion about human life and human potential.
Beth Wright, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689821875
• ISBN-13: 978-0689821875
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,335,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I grew up on a farm outside Washington Court House, Ohio. As a kid, I liked to read a lot, and was also involved in 4-H, various bands and choirs (I played flute and piano), church youth group, the school newspaper, and a quiz-bowl type team. I was pretty disastrous as an athlete, although I did run track one year in high school. After graduating from Miami University (of Ohio), I worked as a newspaper copy editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a newspaper reporter in Indianapolis; and a part-time community college instructor and freelance writer in Danville, Illinois, before my first book was published. I've moved around a lot as an adult, having also lived in Luxembourg (during a college semester abroad) and in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. Several years ago, I moved back to Ohio with my husband and kids; we now live in Columbus, Ohio. My husband trains investigative journalists, and my kids are in high school, so there's always a lot going on around our house.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Growing Younger, September 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Turnabout (Hardcover)

One injection and you begin to grow younger, year by year. What a great idea for a book! (It may, however, not be a topic of great interest to youngsters, but give it to anyone over 21 and it should find a huge audience.) The author thinks of everything including losing the memories you had when you were older, as you continue to grow younger. Can anyone stop this "unaging" process and what will happen when the protagonists are back to diapers? A fascinating idea, a very easy read and one that will surely make a great motion picture! A definite recommendation!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Idea, November 2, 2002

By 

Laura Lynn Walsh "gt-teacher" (Fairbanks, AK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turnabout (Paperback)

In this book, the two main characters start out as old ladies and, though the miracles of science, gradually grow younger, instead of older. When they are in their teens, they realize that they will soon have to find someone to take care of them when they get too young to live by themselves. While I found this idea intriguing, the only students I have had read it, found it less so. The story wasn't quite compelling enough to make them care about them. The students have liked Running Out of Time and Among the Hidden better.

Still, if you like exploring the ideas, the book is worthwhile.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Backward Aging, February 22, 2007

By 

A. Luciano (Lowell, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turnabout (Paperback)

It was the year 2000, and Amelia was living in a nursing home. She was sick and had given up on her life. She was content to let her sons make all of the decisions for her, and she was ready to die. Then the doctors at the nursing home had her sign something. She wasn't quite sure what it was she was signing, but she signed anyway. Things began to change. One day she finds she doesn't need her hearing aid anymore. Amelia can swing her legs over the side of her bed again. Some people who live in the nursing home can walk again instead of being confined to wheelchairs. Amelia learns that what she signed was an agreement to participate in a study of an experimental drug that would reverse the effect of aging. Everyone at the nursing home has taken the drug, and they are all growing younger every day.

Things seem wonderful--it's a second chance at life! Then, on her first birthday back in time, Amelia realizes that she can't remember the last year of her life growing older. The nursing home residents realize that once they start growing younger, their memories of growing older disappear; they are rewritten with the new memories of growing younger. One man is afraid of forgetting his beloved wife's funeral where so many people said such nice things, and he is the first to request the Cure, the drug that will halt his age at that exact moment. The Cure has worked wonderfully in lab mice. But when this man takes the Cure, he immediately shrivels up and dies.

Amelia decides not to stick around very long in this place with the doctors and the other old people getting young. It is too frantic, too upsetting. Instead she and a friend, Anny Beth, decide to go off and live their lives together, experiencing the world a second time as they both grow younger and younger. However, they then get toward the end of their new lives. Amelia, now calling herself Melly, is sixteen and still growing younger. Anny Beth is eighteen. Soon they will not be able to live on their own. What will happen when they are toddlers again? They will need someone to take care of them. Thus begins the search for someone they can trust with their story and their lives.

I loved the whole idea of moving backward in time, and I thought the author did a good job of showing the potential problems with this sort of medical advance. I would have liked to see what things were like even more in the future, when Melly and Anny Beth were almost done with their lives.