No Ordinary Thing
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- CHF 9.00
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- CHF 9.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
An imaginative time travel mystery about a boy whose life is upeneded with the arrival of a stranger and a magical promise.
Twelve-year-old Adam doesn't mind living at his uncle's bakery, the Biscuit Basket, on the Lower East Side in New York City. The warm, delicious smells of freshly baked breads and chocolate croissants make every day feel cozy, even if Adam doesn't have many friends and he misses his long dead parents very much.
When a mysterious but cheerful customer tells Adam that adventures await him, it's too strange to be true. But days later, an unbelievable, incredible thing happens. Adam travels back in time, first to Times Square in 1935, then a candle factory fire in 1967.
But how are these moments related? What do they have to do with his parents' death? And why is a tall man with long eyebrows and a thin mustache following Adam's every move?
In her debut novel G. Z. Schmidt has crafted a world filled with serendipity, mystery, and adventure for readers of Roald Dahl and Lemony Snicket.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schmidt's complex, tightly constructed middle grade debut explores time travel and fantasies about altering the past for the better. Ever since his parents "international aid workers and avid travelers" died in a plane crash when he was five, Adam Lee Tripp, who is biracial (Chinese and white), has lived over and helped at his Uncle Henry's bakery on New York City's Lower East Side. The book opens in 1999, when Adam, now 12, discovers a snow globe in the attic, containing "only a layer of confetti snow nothing else," that transports him back in time to New York City and a small town just north in 1922, 1935, and the 1960s. In both locations and multiple timelines, he becomes involved with characters whose lives turn out to interweave with each other and with three treasures that possess different magical powers: the snow globe, a chestnut music box, and a gold pendulum. The objects' histories are revealed through the story of a young magician at the beginning of the 20th century, an arc that is interspersed with Henry's travels through time and place. Told in a confident narrative voice, the novel adroitly traces the characters' and objects' journeys and connections, encouraging close reading and keen speculation as the suspense builds to a most satisfying conclusion. Ages 8 12.
