A Traveller in Time


By Alison Uttley
Published by Puffin
9 yrs and upwards 



I don't know how I missed this time-honoured British children's novel when I was younger, but I was excited to find it recently and read about Penelope's forays into Tudor times and whether she would meet Mary Queen of Scots! 

There are some really beautiful descriptions of Penelope's home farm in Derbyshire, but I would have liked Penelope/the reader to have spent a little more time in the past - of which we get limited glimpses (which does add to the suspense, of course). 

That Penelope dreams and daydreams and is often unwell reminds me of Marianne Dreams - another British children's classic. The way Penelope transfuses in and out of the past is an unusual and ethereal quality of this story, again written using lovely and haunting descriptions. 

Most of Penelope's time in the past is spent directly contrasting the two farms in their different times, which would appeal to history lovers in general, however the past Babington family's empathy towards Mary Queen of Scots is what intrigued me the most.

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