Abraham Lincoln, Pro Wrestler by Steve Sheinkin, and: Abigail Adams, Pirate of the Caribbean (review)

In the debut volume of Sheinkin's Time Twisters series, soon-to-be-president Lincoln emerges from a book carton in the school library workroom, frustrated that schoolkids find history a bore. Abby and Doc, fourth-grade stepsibs who are the first kids he encounters, don't know much about him, but they do know that his threat to step outside the course of history and pursue a wrestling career will come to no good. Hijinks ensue as Lincoln decides to stay in present time to enter a wrestling match, while Abby and Doc manage to send their gym teacher (who had been pretending to be Lincoln for a class visit) back to 1860 election eve so they can figure out how to fix the mess; unfortunately, only few tidbits of Lincoln biography surface through the mayhem. Everyone ends up in their correct roles, of course, and the stage is set for Abigail Adams to dive through her laundry basket in the dank new executive mansion in the next book, convinced the life of piracy aboard Captain Rackham's ship holds more charm than the future of a hard-working but largely ornamental first lady in the D.C. mud. Even without the shout-out in Abraham Lincoln, readers will recognize the time-traveling premise of Osborne's Magic Tree House series. Missing, however, are Jack and Annie's efficient transitions from modern into historical times and the coherent if simplified episodes in which they are involved. From the winking "History is boring!" magic words (which will surely puzzle readers who already accept that it's not), to the clunky interjection of backstory, to the relegation of the actual history narrative to back matter, Time Twisters will need some practice to knock Magic Tree House out of the ring. EB