Once Was a Time

In World War II England, best friends Lottie and Kitty are kidnapped to force Lottie's scientist father to reveal the secrets of time travel. Lottie escapes through a time portal--leaving Kitty behind. In 2013 Wisconsin, Lottie searches for answers about her friend's fate. Sales handles time travel lightly, allowing her to explore perspectives on time and aging without getting bogged down in details.

In World War II England, Lottie and Kitty are best friends. But when they are kidnapped by (putative) Nazis who threaten to shoot them if Lottie's scientist father doesn't give up the secrets of time travel, Lottie sees a chance to escape through a fortuitously occurring time portal and takes it-leaving Kitty behind. Randomly arriving in 2013 Sutton, Wisconsin, Lottie soon settles in with a new foster family, but her guilt drives her to the library in search of answers to what happened to her friend. Then one day, three years later, a thunderbolt-Lottie improbably finds a postcard from Kitty tucked into a copy of A Little Princess, their favorite book from childhood. Sales handles time travel lightly, establishing it as a quasi-natural phenomenon, which allows her to play with perspectives on time and aging without getting bogged down in questions of why and how. Lottie's fish-out-of-water disembarkation in the twenty-first century is an amusing diversion; more involving is a school-story subplot that asks Lottie to give up her place in the popular-girl clique and befriend the class nerd as the only means of following the postcard trace to Kitty. An over-the-top climax may test the patience of readers who like their puzzles airtight but will delight those who prefer to revel in the vast mysteries of time and coincidence, with only just enough explanation to satisfy them. anita l. burkam