This is both a good, solid time travel story (by which I mean it deals with the whole cultural dislocation of time travel nicely, without getting too terribly caught up in Lottie's exploration of the wonders of the future), mixed with a good friendship story-being true to yourself and making friends with who you want to be friends with without getting caught up in peer pressure. And so she finds a way to get to Italy, with the help of a boy who could have been her friend if her clique of girls hadn't taught her to shun him, following clues that Kitty maybe, perhaps, left. Never will she have another friend like her, and so she goes along with the group of girls who took her in, enchanted by her English accent, even though she doesn't have much in common with her.īut then she finds something hidden in a copy of her favorite book that gives her hope that she might find Kitty again, that maybe Kitty didn't die, even though that's what it says on line. Except that she is haunted not just by her lost life in generally, but by her abandonment of Kitty. Fortunately as well, she is taken in by a foster family (child services is almost magically wonderful), and so she becomes an ordinary American school kid. Fortunately, she finds a friendly library (which has relevance to the plot). And her father, and the whole world of WW II England. She finds herself in our time, in the Midwest, in her pajamas in the middle of nowhere, with no way to get home again. Time travel could have military uses, and so 10-year-old Lottie and her dearest friend Kitty are taken hostage the kidnappers think her dad knows more than he's letting on, and are going to kill the two girls unless he spills his secretes.Īnd then a time portal appears (!) and Lottie, hardly pausing to think, jumps through to escape her captors, leaving Kitty behind. He believes that shimmering time portals randomly appear, but doesn't know how they work. In England in WW II, Lottie's scientist father spends his days trying to figure out the secrets of time travel. I have actually gotten my ducks in a row and have a book for this week's Timeslip Tuesday- Once Was a Time, by Leila Sales (Chronicle Books, Middle Grade, April 5, 2016).

Once was a time by leila sales