“Time
Spies: Horses in the Wind”
by Candice Ransom
c.2007,
Mirrorstone • $4.99 / $5.99 Canada • 118 pages
If
you could travel back in time, where would you go?
Would you go back to walk with (and run away
from) dinosaurs?
Or
would you step back many years and play with your grandparents?
Maybe
you’d be the kid to go back just one week, so you could take a test again and
pass.
Mattie,
Alex, and Sophie Chapman can go wherever they want to go, thanks to a secret
portal in their Virginia vacation home.
In
“Time Spies: Horses in the Wind” by Candice Ransom, the kids travel eighty
years back to a great galloping adventure.
Life
is pretty boring for eight-year-old Alex Chapman. Alex, nine-year-old Mattie,
and five-year-old Sophie are the only kids for miles and there’s nobody to play
soccer with. Alex is bored, but it
doesn’t last long.
That’s
because Alex and his sisters have become time spies.
At
the beginning of their summer, the siblings found a secret third-floor
passageway in the bed-and-breakfast that their parents run.
By
entering the portal, they travel through time. Anyone staying in the B&B’s
Jefferson Suite is a travel guide, and now someone’s due any minute!
Alex
hopes with all his might that a sporting adventure is next.
When
the lodger arrives, the kids learn that she’s a horse expert and she offers
them a clue.
The
next morning, the children slither through their secret portal – PLOP! – right into October 20, 1938, and a different kind of sports
event.
Seabiscuit, a swift but scrawny
horse that nobody wanted, is slated to race against War Admiral, the fastest
horse ever known.
People
from miles around and reporters from many newspapers want to see this historic
race. Alex got his wish, even though it’s not exactly the kind of sport he’s
used to playing.
At
the track, the kids meet Bobby, Seabiscuit’s
caretaker, who tells the kids that everyone wants to know what makes the horse
so fast.
Bobby
is afraid that spies will sneak in to Seabiscuit’s
stall and gather secrets.
What
Bobby doesn’t know is that Alex, Mattie, and Sophie Chapman are time spies, and
they’re already on the case …
Kids
possess incredibly fertile imaginations, and yours no doubt have imagined a few
what-ifs about stepping out to another time.
This
cute, middle-aptitude-reader chapter-book helps add to that daydream.
Author
Candice Ransom mixes true history, real-life action, authentic people and
locales, and three smart, heroic, good kids all together to create a fast-paced
story that will hold the attention of even the most reluctant reader.
Boys
as well as girls will find plenty of fun in here, and kids who love horses or
history will inhale this book and want more.
Lucky
for them all, there are several Times Spies books already in print and more to
come.
If
your 7-to-12-year-old can’t get enough of “Magic Tree House” books or the
everything-old-is-new-again “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, be on the
lookout for “Horses in the Wind” and all of the Time Spies stories.
These
are books your kids will want to make time to read.