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| ARC complements of Random House |
Albert Einstein
Hawking Chaudhury (what a great name!) twelfth birthday was not what he expected. He receives two special birthday gifts. The first one is a hamster he names Alan
Shearer. The second is a letter from his
deceased father. Al’s father died when
he was eight, so it is a bit unexpected.
What is in the letter is even more peculiar.
It describes how he needs to get his dad’s time traveling machine and
return to 1984, so he can prevent the go-kart accident that eventually causes
his dad’s demise.
Time traveling is
not as easy as expected, and messing with time has consequences. Al meets his dad, and grandpa. Has to steal, break into houses, and lies to
hopefully safe his dad. I’m not going to
tell you more because a little more gives a lot away.
The other night
at dinner I told my nephew I was reading a book called Time Traveling with a Hamster. I was telling him about the book
and he replied, “Why do so many books have a back story where the parents die
in a tragic car crash?” I told him he
was jumping the gun. I never said there
was a car crash, but that his dad had a go-kart accident 30 years ago and that
caused the death. He seemed more
interested. For the record this 10-year-old
boy reads numerous books where the parents have tragic deaths, so his concerns
lack merit! I’ll be interested to hear his reaction to the book.
Anyway, I
thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ross
Welford is a master at capturing the reader and keeping us on the edge of our
seat. He pulls at our heartstrings with
scenes involving a loving grandfather and grieving grandson. He makes us laugh with scenes of Al
“borrowing” his grandpa’s scooter to get to his old house so he can steal the
time machine. He makes it difficult to
put down this enjoyable book.
Random House has
this as a book for ages 8-12. I would
say closer to the older range. There is
nothing shocking or too upsetting, but I think higher readers and more mature
readers will enjoy it more. It would be
a great Guys Read Book Club book if the group is mostly 10-12 year old boys.
I did use the
book to model how to “think about my reading”.
I showed my third graders how I had questions while I was reading. I even showed them a YouTube video about the
Geordie dialect because I wasn’t sure what it was.
Like I wrote
earlier, I am excited to see what Levi thinks of this book. I will have to see if he will fit it to his
reading. He is currently rereading the
Potter series. Maybe he will take it to school and read it there. If that happens I will never see the copy
again because he passes it around to the other fourth graders.
