The Time Travel Twins (The Time Travel Twins, 1)
Basket, a white girl, and Pew, a Black boy, are twelve-year-old twins, living in a terrible fortress-like orphanage. Oddly, there are no other children there. They long to know something about their parents, and, of course, to get out of the orphanage.
A strange man’s appearance in their room, by means of a top hat, starts the kids on a time-traveling journey. They land in 1777 Brooklyn, New York, in the middle of the American Revolution. Quickly they discover they are the only ones who can prevent an evil time traveler from changing things so that the American side loses.
This book will resonate with fans of the Lemony Snicket series, with its sometimes dark humor, asides, fancy language, and many, many twists and turns. Although the book is long, its short cliff-hanger chapters propel the reader along quickly.
Several times violence is depicted for humor, including a graphic scene where a torturer has a series of bloody accidents with the devices he’s intending to use on the twins. Also, the historical figures are crafted to be caricatures, which adds to the humor but may be misleading to children. There are occasional sidebars about the actual history and battles. This book is the first in a middle-grade series.
