The Longest Night of Charlie Noon by Christopher Edge (review)

Charlie Noon has just moved from London in 1933, and she only has one friend: Dizzy, a boy with a disability due to a childhood case of polio. When Dizzy and Charlie are pranked in the woods by the school bully, Johnny Baines, the three get helplessly lost as time starts to act strange and they're hauled from one dreamlike sequence to the next, using clues left in Morse code and pigpen cipher to figure a way out of the forest. Amidst scenes from a war that hasn't happened yet and a tree trunk full of candy bars that won't be available until the 1990s, Charlie is determined to put the oddities at an end and escape the woods for good. In this British import, Edge parcels out information deliberately and with much impact, such as withholding narrator Charlie's gender until about halfway through the book, when Johnny taunts Charlie for being a girl. Readers who love a good puzzle have many chances to utilize decoding skills, and keys are provided to help them figure out the clues alongside (or before) the characters. In addition to the brain-teasing puzzles, this novel offers an introspective take on the passage of time and the impact of huge world events on a personal level.