Time Travel Makes It Real

"Help!" was the plea we heard from a young English teacher friend of ours. Completing her fifth year in a huge, inner-city Philadelphia high school, she groaned that her students were losing interest in reading as the springtime temperatures soared. Her two classes of tenth grade "basics" students were deteriorating and they all needed a change of pace. She was currently "dragging" them through Cyrano de Bergerac, which was taking far longer than any of them wanted.

We offered to lend her a set of time-travel novels that we had collected, and though not the standard fare for reading remediation, especially at the high school level, we assured her that these books would hook her students. Included in the bulging box were Caroline Cooney's Both Sides of Time (Laurel-Leaf, 1997), Out of Time (Dell, 1997), and Prisoner of Time (Delacorte, 1998); Jane Louise Curry's Dark Shade (1998) and Moon Window (1996, both McElderry); Jeanette Ingold's The Window (1996) and Kathryn Reiss's Time Windows (1991, both Harcourt). To round out the collection, we included Pete Hautman's Mr. Was (1996) and, for the very low-functioning readers, Margaret Peterson Haddix's faux time travel Running Out of Time (1995, both S & S). For the teacher herself we added a copy of Gary Paulsen's Transall Saga (Delacorte, 1998), which she read aloud to both classes.

Not long after her time-travel unit began, she called and remarked that attendance was up substantially, and, furthermore, the students were actually excited to come to class and read! A week later, we received an even more promising phone call. "One of the kids tucked a note in the book she had just completed that read, 'Can I PLEASE have another one of these?'" Another student recorded in his journal, "I din't [sic] know there was books like these. It's cool!" Needless to say, the teacher was ecstatic.

Novels involving time travel have an almost universal appeal, similar to the general popularity that reader-preference studies indicate about mysteries. Even adamant nonreaders are often attracted by a good mystery/suspense tale, and, at least in the case of those two "basics" English classes, time-travel novels apparently had the same effect.

What is it about these books that engages readers? First, it is human nature to ponder the future and consider "What is going to happen to this world?" or "What does my future hold?" Second, humans—even young teens who continue to report history/social studies as their most disliked subject—are intrigued by the past. They are given to wonder what it was really like to live in another time and often ponder the "what ifs" of past events—what if someone could go back in time and change the course of history? Take, for example, Dan Gutman's fascinating "Baseball Card Adventures" (HarperCollins/Avon), in which 13-year-old Joe Stoshack possesses the unique ability to travel back in time to meet famous baseball greats like Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Mickey Mantle just by holding the player's card in his hand. In Shoeless Joe & Me (2002), one of the five available titles published to date, the protagonist meets up with the hapless Joe Jackson and tries in vain to keep him from becoming one of the infamous Chicago Black Sox.

A third reason time travel engages readers is that, like most good children's and young adult novels, the stories are about ordinary kids. Often the protagonists in these books are troubled or "at risk" kids, but unlike the typical problem novel, these stories thrust the characters into an era and environment foreign to them. Through these experiences, readers are caught up in the events and with the people who ultimately help them cope with their own problems.

Further, we suggest that traveling into the past along with a fictionalized teen helps to connect young readers with their own pasts, bringing history alive in a particularly meaningful way. For example, in the 1980s, Jane Yolen reported her dismay at the reaction of junior high students to her explanations of the Holocaust. They were so disconnected from what they were hearing that they suggested she was making it up. This experience inspired her to write one of the finest time-travel novels available. In The Devil's Arithmetic (Viking, 1988), Yolen takes a modern Jewish girl, Hannah, who has little understanding of or patience with her own heritage and transports her back to a shtetl on the Polish-German border in 1942. She confronts what she had considered meaningless historical events and comes away a different person. Not only does the Holocaust become real for her, but she also develops a deep sensitivity and love for her roots.

Even books with lighter themes can illuminate history by allowing readers to see it through the eyes of a modern character. For instance, in Gutman's Babe & Me (Avon, 2000), the World Series takes place during the height of the Great Depression, and the author wisely contextualizes the events so that readers know that baseball wasn't the only thing happening in 1932. Likewise, Jackie French provides readers with a view of what the Depression was like the same year in Australia in Somewhere Around the Corner (Holt, 1995; o.p.).

Other topics that surface through the pages of time-travel novels include slavery, medicine, and gender issues. What happens when children, viewing the past with a modern-day eye, see hate, ignorance, and stupidity? If they were taught about these things in the pages of their history books or by a teacher, it is unlikely they would remember them beyond an upcoming exam. With time travel, young people live along with the main characters, and because of this, the events resonate with them and they remember what they have read.

For instance, in Avi's memorable tale, Something Upstairs (Orchard, 1988), readers see slavery and its effects when the ghost of Caleb, a murdered slave, wrenches himself up from the bloody stain on the floorboards of a small upstairs room in Kenny's old house. Kenny then goes back in time to try to understand bigotry, to find the murderer, and to right an injustice. Belinda Hurmence offers a different perspective on slavery in A Girl Called Boy (Clarion, 1998). Blanche Overtha Yancey, Boy for short, eschews her African heritage and wanders off during a family picnic. Wading across a shallow river, she finds herself transported back to the 1850s, where people believe she is a runaway slave. Captured, Boy is lucky enough to become a pampered house slave, which almost causes her to forget the importance of freedom. From first scoffing at the slavery issue, she finally comes to honor what her forebears suffered during that harsh period in American history.

The miracles of modern medicine are examined in Haddix's Running Out of Time. A unique variation on the time-travel plot, the story involves a group of 20th-century people who are part of what is known as a "living history village" of the 1840s. The children have known no other way of life until Jessie's mother sends her "outside" to purchase medicine to stop the outbreak of diphtheria. There, she comes face to face with the shocking world of 1996. Time for Andrew (Clarion, 1994) by Mary Downing Hahn also deals with controlling diphtheria. Drew is staying at his great aunt's farm during the summer when he encounters an ailing boy from the past named Andrew. Since the two boys look strikingly alike, they decide to change places in time so that Andrew might receive modern medical treatment for his disease. Upon recovery, however, Andrew finds that he likes modern times much more, and whether the two boys switch back to their own respective eras hinges solely on a game of marbles (directions are included as a postscript by the author).

Gender issues are often questioned when modern characters end up in a different time period. Books that raise these questions effectively are Caroline Cooney's Both Sides of Time and its sequels. Fifteen-year-old Annie Lockwood slips back in time 100 years and is immediately criticized for her behavior and boyish dress. She experiences firsthand the expectations and lifestyles for women of the 1890s. Needless to say, this spunky teenager calls into question such practices as the wearing of corsets and fainting at the least bit of stress.

Of all the reasons readers may choose Time-Travel fiction, the most compelling is arguably its pure sense of adventure. One doesn't travel to the past or the future simply for fun—even if the trip is premeditated as a lark. Readers automatically expect danger and intrigue, and rarely does the genre let them down. And the really good backlist titles maintain their appeal over time. Lloyd Alexander's Time Cat (1963) is a testament to the enduring popularity of such tales. Recently rereleased in a new hardcover edition (2003, both Holt), this classic tale is divided into nine parts—one for each of the lives of Jason's cat, Gareth. But the magic of the story is in the fact that Gareth can take his master to visit each life—every one in a different ancient culture.

Time-travel adventures are amusing and spine tingling, the life lessons are memorable, and they can be used as effective tools for the corollary teaching of history. We are not advocating shying away from the classics, but our primary goal lies in developing lifelong readers. Given a varied diet of appropriate, high-interest books, such as the novels mentioned above, kids are gladly ushered into the joys of reading. Time-travel books lure students into their pages—even those who are reluctant to set aside a video game or turn off a sitcom. As one high school freshman wrote, "Why didn't somebody write this kind of book before? I want another!"