Ghost Letters (review)

Stuck in the middle of a twin sandwich, eleven-year-old Miriam Gill is on her own between twelve-year-olds Ray and Robbie and four-year-olds Nell and Nora. Luckily, Miri has a vivid imagination that's excellent company, but she's not playing make-believe the day she discovers a piece of glass taped to the baseboard in the corner of her attic room and uses it to transport herself back in time to the year 1935. There, Miri meets the previous occupant of her bedroom, another brown-haired, nearsighted eleven-year-old girl, in this case Molly Gardner, who is struggling to survive while living with her greedy and judgmental cousins, including the murderous and abominable Horst. It is up to Miri to discover the secret of time travel and rescue Molly from the right place at the wrong time. Miri's familial predicament may be atypical (only one in eight million families has two sets of twins, as her proud father loves to point out) but her frustration at being left out will be instantly recognizable to middle children everywhere, and readers anywhere along the birth order will understand her desire to find that other half with whom she can share her innermost thoughts and feelings. Barrows is particularly deft with characters' language ("Golly Moses!" exclaims Molly; "Ray. Dude." says Robbie), effectively distinguishing between the time periods and mirroring the way kids really talk to each other. This is a handy introduction to time travel for a younger set; the rules are not so complex as to befuddle the reader, but they're intricate enough to pique interest and challenge precepts, and it's always a revelatory exercise to look at today's world through the eyes of someone living over seventy years ago. Happily, Miri and Molly manage to change history without negative repercussions, leaving readers to ponder the possibility of fixing other errors in time.