The Time Travellers: Adventure Calling (The Time Travellers, 1)
Suhana and her friends Mia and Ayaan, who are in the final year of primary school, are whisked off back in time by means of a phone app when they are on a visit to the Houses of Parliament. They quickly establish that the year is 1911, the coronation of a new king is imminent, and they find themselves in the midst of a crowd of women protesting about not having the right to vote. Suhana is amazed to discover that some of these women have brown skin like her, and an acquaintance with Reena Rao of Rajasthan, the king’s goddaughter, is soon made.
In the course of this short chapter book, Suhana learns about suffragettes and suffragists and that Indian women played a significant role that she was not aware of, within the British women’s suffrage movement. This information is well integrated within an exciting and sometimes tense tale, although the return of the trio to their own time is not really seriously in doubt.
There is also a link made with the importance of protest in the past and in modern times with reference to the international global climate strike movement led by Greta Thunberg and many other young people. Appendices explain more about this and about the role of Indian women in the suffrage movement, including named personalities such as Lolita Roy, who makes an appearance in the story, and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, about whom two books for children have previously appeared – one by Sufiya Ahmed herself, the other being The Royal Rebel by Bali Rai (reviewed in HNR100).
The first in a proposed series in which the three Time Travellers will explore hidden history – ‘experience the past and make it right in the present’ to create empathy.
