Don't Know Where, Don't Know When by Annette Laing == Time Travel

I was so pleased to receive, from the author, an autographed copy of Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The first book in the Snipesville Chronicles!) by Annette Laing.  From the back cover:

What a nightmare.  Hannah Dias, California Girl with Attitude, and Alex, her laid-back brother, have moved from exciting San Francisco to boring Snipesville, Georgia.life doesn't improve when they meet Brandon, a dorky kid who is plotting his escape from the Deep South, and the weird Professor, who has a strange accent.  

Suddenly, the kids are catapulted thousands of miles and almost seventy years to England during World War Two.  They fall into a world of stinging nettles, dragon ladies, bomb blasts, ugly underwear, stinky sandwiches, painful punishments, and non-absorbing toilet paper.  They learn so much more than they could ever learn in a history class.  Not that they want to learn it.

But they can't go home unless they find George Braithwaite, and whatever it is that he has to do with Snipesville.

This is one of those books that it would be a pleasure to re-read, to catch all the little connections you didn't catch the first time around.  I'm a big fan of time travel (and parallel worlds -- I love the movie Sliding Doors) and this book was definitely a hit for me in this area. 

I appreciated the discussion that Brandon and the professor have about what is different because it's 1915 and what's different because it's London (versus the United States).  The distinction makes total sense to me and I could see myself wondering the same thing.  In fact, I have wondered something similar -- I grew up in small-town Indiana.  Before moving to Denver four years ago, most big cities I'd spent time in were located in another country (China, Guatemala, Costa Rica) and I often wondered what was "big city" and what was "different country". (If we were talking in person this is where I'd probably lapse into the mildly amusing story about the butcher shop in NYC, but we'll just all try to stay on task, shall we?)

In her acknowledgments Laing thanks her friends for encouraging her "'not to worry about the P.C. People.'  You're right:  the past is not politically correct".  There were a few parts of the book that did indeed rub me the wrong way and perhaps it was those very things that Laing is referring to as politically incorrect.  At one point, after breaking a neighbor's window, Hannah is beaten with a leather belt. The professor's explanation?   "Mrs. D. doesn't think like the adults in your world, or at least like the adults in your world tell you that they think.  In her world, unlike ours, almost everyone says it's fine to spank children now and then, but it is not considered a good idea to burden kids with grown-up worries.  So Mrs. D. reckons that kids are kids, and her two only needed a simple lesson today . . . She hopes they will learn their lesson so she never has to repeat it." This makes sense to me as an explanation, but not as a justification, if that makes sense.  It was also a little disconcerting to me when Hannah thinks to herself, after being approached by an older woman, ". . . the lady would probably look quite a bit younger if she wore makeup, dyed her hair, and got her wrinkles ironed out with Botox" (p.137) and goes on to mention facelifts and dental work.  I think this was another attempt to point out the differences between the two time periods but this is the kind of thing that makes me cringe -- just the whole idea of someone "needing" Botox.  But these are just small quibbles.

Some fun or humorous parts -- Hannah and Alex find a Monopoly board and discover that it's all London landmarks -- So Park Lane instead of Park Place, etc.  I liked it when they played "pass the parcel" at a birthday party, as we did that a few months ago at the birthday party of a dear (English) friend. Laing is good at this type of detail.  On page 105, after the professor has been speaking with Hannah outside a classroom -- "The other girls think I've been scolding you, so try to look upset and angry.  Oh, I see you already do.  That's helpful."  And the Scooby Doo reference on page 178, "'All thanks to us meddling kids!' Hannah said cheerfully, to blank looks from everyone except Alex, who put his hands over his eyes" is a classic.

The book closes with the professor back in London, examining an artifact in the Victoria and Albert Museum and leaving the reader to wonder what part the artifact will play in the next book -A Different Day, A Different Destiny!  I will definitely want to learn about the next adventure and I am curious about whether the characters will stay the same.  

I hope to have a young friend also read this and write a guest post with her reactions.  I'll be interested to hear what someone closer to the target audience thinks.

Oh, and check out Imaginative Journeys!