A Chase In Time by Sally Nicholls

Published by Nosy Crow

AFTER reading and adoring her dazzling YA Historical Fiction stand-alone Things A Bright Girl Can Do, it came as no surprise to me that this delve into the past by Sally Nicholls would be just as exciting. A Chase In Time, while aimed at younger readers from around eight or nine, keeps up the necessary pace to hold the reader’s attention without ever becoming confusing. This is the perfect reason to read Nicholls.

A Chase In Time makes for a fast-paced and fun-filled read that serves as a perfect introduction for younger readers into history. This is because it focuses on the ordinary people of the time rather than large and difficult to grasp concepts of war without context.

Alex Pilgrim has a love of old and beautiful things, and so living with his sister Ruby and their parents in an ordinary modern English home gives him little opportunity aside from the summer. For two weeks every year, Ruby and Alex go to stay at their aunt’s bed and breakfast, a Victorian home full of remnants of the place it used to be. And secrets. For three years Alex has told no one about the mirror in his room there in which whenever he visits he sees a little boy, in the very same house but far in the past.

Checking in on this mirror, on this boy in the other world’s life quickly becomes his favourite part of the summer, until it starts to become clear that the bed and breakfast is in trouble financially and everything changes.

Attempting to take off the top on an old bottle he found, Alex accidentally drops the open bottle, and it starts releasing dust and smoke. It is after this that something changes with the mirror, upon going to show it to Ruby they find it no longer to be solid and the two fall in.

On the other side the siblings find themselves in the very same bedroom in which they started, but now in 1912 with a very different pair of siblings from themselves. Fortunately the four strike up a friendship, but rather disastrously Alex and Ruby are brought into an adventure they’ll never forget.

An important and expensive artifact has been stolen from the house, one that, if recovered, could end the financial problems of the Pilgrim family in both the past and the present. Before their return home can they uncover the thieves and save the house they love so much and the business of their aunt?

This and more are answered in this quick and heartwarming read that utilises time travel for younger readers with a kind of eloquence and care that anyone who has read Nicholls should expect.

This book makes a perfect gift for budding readers and intertwines an appropriate level of historical accuracy with friendship and adventure, making it a fabulously fun novel to pass on.

It will get the children in your life talking about and interested in both storytelling and real history.