Wildwing

January 17, 2011
In this enjoyable historical coming-of-age story, Addy is chafing in her life as the poor daughter of a single mother in a small English town in 1913. When another girl calls Addy's mother a slut, 15-year-old Addy gets into a fight that results in her mother pulling her out of school and forcing her into service tending to an elderly eccentric. But Addy soon discovers that her new employer has invented a time machine, and when her mother threatens her with full-time service, she hops into the machine and begins a new life as Lady Mathilda in medieval England. There she meets handsome Will, is catered to by a legion of servants, learns how to work with falcons, and grows up enough to know when it's time to go home. The fantasy premise of escaping into a new identity ("If I could, I'd shed the girl I am like a snake slides out of a ragged, outgrown skin," Addy thinks) should strongly appeal to teens, who will relate to Addy's frustration with the limits of her life. Ages 12–up.

January 1, 2011

Gr 7-10-Trapped by her somewhat dubious parentage and the limited options available to women in 1913 England, 15-year-old Addy longs for a better life. However, after a scuffle incited by a classmate's taunts, she finds herself pulled from school and placed as a maid in the home of Mr. Greenwood, the local eccentric. Venturing behind the locked door of his study, she discovers a time machine that could be the key to escaping her life of drudgery. She travels back to 13th-century England, where she is mistaken for Lady Matilda, the gentlewoman who is to be married to the lord of the local castle. She quickly learns to play her role, mastering the customs of the time and gradually realizing the political importance of the marriage. She also finds it impossible to resist her attraction to Will, the falconer's son. As she becomes more and more embroiled in events, she is forced to choose between the safety of her subjects or life with the man with whom she has fallen in love. Whitman populates both of her worlds with vivid, believable characters. Akin in tone to Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty (Delacorte, 2003), this historical novel with a time-travel twist of sci-fi will find an avid readership.-Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK

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