Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield

October 17, 2011
Adult author Hood’s first middle-grade offering launches the planned eight-book Treasure Chest series, which has 12-year-old twins Maisie and Felix Robbins traveling through time to meet iconic American figures from centuries past. Unhappy about moving from their New York City apartment to their ailing great-aunt’s mansion in Newport, R.I., the twins, who are still reeling from their parents’ recent divorce, make the best of it by exploring their new home, discovering hints of magic as they do. In a room called the Treasure Chest, filled with collected odds and ends of every variety, Maisie and Felix inadvertently travel back to 1836 Massachusetts, where they befriend a teenage Clara Barton (who would go on to organize the Red Cross), before learning how to return home—and perhaps even helping history along a bit. The twins’ personalities (and their historical ignorance) are believable, and there’s a strong, nostalgic sense of the push and pull between past and present woven throughout. While Maisie and Felix’s mother often encourages them to “Stop dwelling on the past,” they can’t help but be drawn to a time—before the move, before the divorce—when things seemed better. Ages 8–12.

December 15, 2011
Time travel loses its way in a maze of clichés, product placements and a slow-moving plot. In modern Newport, R.I., fifth-grade twins Felix and Maisie are unhappy with all the changes in their lives. Their parents' divorce has forced them to move to the servants' quarters of Elm Medona, a huge historic mansion owned by distant relatives, far from the bustle of their former life in Manhattan. The twins discover the Treasure Chest, a room filled with artifacts that (eventually) transport them to the young Clara Barton's farmhouse in 1836. It takes nearly 100 pages to get back in time, and once there, the drama slows even more. Meeting Clara and realizing some 175 years have passed seems pedestrian to these modern children. The first thing they want to do is to teach Clara to play baseball. There is little tension, even when they are uncertain as to how they might return to their own lives. Odd-seeming dropping of brand names and overly long descriptions of place further slow the narrative. While the children have an artifact to offer the young Clara, it's hard to see why it matters and how it might change history.

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