You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Margaret, who is looking for an older YA title:
Not overly hopeful, but here goes:
I’m looking for a book that we might now classify as YA, probably written in the late 60s or early 70s.
A girl goes to spend the summer with family friends, is lonely, and spends a lot of time up a tree. She falls and breaks her arm (leg?) and wakes up back in time at the same house, but with different people.
There is a boy named Kit involved (Christopher, I think), and it was a sweet, wonderful story.
Anyone know of any time-traveling, tree-climbing YA heroines?
I can’t help with the title, unfortunately, but Goodreads has a list of YA time-travel-themed books published in every decade going back to 1900: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89156.Children_s_Time_Travel_Fiction_of_the_1970s
I got really excited and thought I knew this one, but the book I’m thinking of came out around 2008/2009. But the description does sound familiar. I feel like the author’s name was Margaret something?
I wonder if you might be thinking of Tom’s Midnight Garden. In this story it’s Tom who goes back in time when the clock strikes 13 and he meets a little girl living in the past in the same house. She has an accident when she falls from a tree.
Such a beautiful story. If it’s not this one then I’d really recommend it as it’s simply wonderful.
I read this book and loved it as a tween — I recall there being a connection with Mary Queen of Scots, and possibly also a mirror? I will keep searching!
I thought it might be Penelope Lively, but nothing from her bibliography is ringing a bell. And Barbara Willard (I inhaled “The Lark and the Laurel” and its successors) also doesn’t fit. This is a tough one!!
This sounds like my catnip. Hope it’s found and love the suggestions!
Jennifer Robson I think you are referring to Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time, but I don’t remember a broken arm in that one.
Irene — I think you’re right and I am conflating several of my childhood favorites! Oh well — will cross my fingers someone here has clearer memories of the books they read in the 70s.
It’s not one of the Green Knowe series, is it? They feature children in the same house over different time periods and I *think* there’s some time travel.
OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS. Especially you, @Irene Headley. I have been searching for this book for more than 30 years. Literally I am standing here crying. Couldn’t remember the name or the author, but I remembering closing it after I first read it and thinking, “I want to write something that makes people, even just one person, as happy as this book made me.” I was maybe eleven years old, and I checked that book out of the library at regular intervals and then just lost track of it for a while. Thank you, thank you!
Also I hope the original HABO title on this post is found because it sounds great!
This rings a quiet bell in me. It’s just the type of book I would have been reading back when I was a girl. So I wondered if it was one of the books by the British children’s author Meta Mayne Reid. She wrote, for instance, The Cuckoo at Coolnean, Strangers in Carrigmore, With Angus in the Forest – books set in Ireland, current and past. In one of her series, there was a magic cat and a bush that had magic leaves and when the kids would chew the leaves I seem to remember them being able to time-travel. I know for certain that With Angus in the Forest concerned going back in time to sometime like 9th century Ireland. They were great books and now hard to find, sadly.
I wish I remembered the plots more clearly, but man, that was over 45 years ago! *LOL*
I went through quite a time travel phase once upon a time and I swear I’ve read either this or something similar. Any memories of where this story might have taken place? How far back in time the girl traveled?
@Jessica, The Time Traveller by Allison Uttley takes place in Elizabethan times and there’s a plot afoot to rescue Mary Queen of Scots. I seem to remember the song Greensleeves having a prominent role in the plot SPOILER sorry.
@Meg Was asking about the original HABO, but The Time Traveller sounds like one I’d like too!
Not the HABO, but The Ancient One by T.A. Barron is a fantastic YA featuring time travel through a tree. I still re-read it every few years.
I was going to suggest “Why Have the Birds Stopped Singing,” which appears on the Goodreads list, but I agree with Jennifer and Irene that this sounds more like “A Traveller in Time” by Alison Uttley than anything else.
And thank you to Jenny for the links to those Goodreads lists. I’ve always loved children’s and YA time travel stories, and when I took a children’s literature course in college, I wrote my final paper about them. I’m always on the lookout for ones that I somehow missed.
@Jennifer Robson – oh my god! I thought I was the only one who read Barbara Willard’s series. I never did get to read them all – my local bookstore just didn’t have them all. I still have 3-4 of them. I need to do a search to find the rest. Love that series!
I don’t think either of these are the one, but it reminds me of a mix of Elizabeth Marie Pope’s 2 books – The Perilous Guard (there is a Kit hero) and The Sherwood Ring where the heroine is visited by her Revolutionary War ghost ancestors at her uncle’s house
Well, for those who are in the YA-time travel catnip zone, I remember (I think I even still have a copy) “Cat in the Mirror” by Mary Stolz. It is, sadly, out of print and definitely not the HABO but there are copies out there.
@chacha1 Loved that one too! In a similar vein (Ancient Egypt, felines, links across time) is Clare Bell’s Tomorrow’s Sphinx.
So many good recommendations! Thanks to Margaret for generating this thread, now bookmarked for future reference.
The HABO sure does sound familiar, at least the Kit part, although I can’t remember a broken arm. I definitely read a lot of this kind of thing. Maybe it’ll come to me… Meanwhile I’ve requested all of the above through my lovely local library, and my thanks again to you all for that!
This is sounding really familiar – I read so many books when I was young, but I’m sure that the HABO was one of them. I’ve just sent the post to my sisters (we all tended to read the same books) to see if either of them remembers.
(A Traveller in Time and Tom’s Midnight Garden were both favourites of Young Kate.)
Is it a Handful of Time by Kit Pearson?
She ends up hanging out with Christopher Marlowe?
@Ktownhomestead – I don’t think that it’s A Handful of Time – I don’t remember a fall from a tree / broken bone or a boy named Kit or Christopher – it’s more of a mother-daughter reconciliation novel. But it’s one that I loved and it has travelled with me through many a move. I’ve just pulled it off my bookshelf for a re-read!
When I first read the description I was sure it was The Root Cellar, by Janet Lunn–Rose is 12, sent to live with relatives on Lake Ontario, and finds a root cellar (IIRC she falls in it?). When she comes out she’s at the same house but during the American civil war. Now that I’m reading the synopsis it doesn’t mention a Kit, and it’s later than your dates, published in 1981. So many good books on this thread!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_Cellar
Since it fits with this thread – I highly recommend VICTORY by Susan Cooper. Parallel stories, not really time travel but there’s a link between Battle of Trafalgar and present day – the girl in present day Mystic Seaport, CT, can “see” I guess is the right word into the past, and sort of witness her ancestor’s role as Lord Nelson’s cabin boy on HMS Victory.
(And yes, it made the adults even the husband tear up even though we knew what was coming … very good book).
And re Trefoil’s book on root cellars – I was lucky enough to visit the root cellar capital of the world, Elliston, Newfoundland last year. A serious plethora of root cellars. And puffins. More root cellars than people, if I recall, but more puffins than anything else. It was gorgeous – although those root cellars do remind you of how hard life was not so long ago.
Oh I know I read this book–many many times. I can’t remember the name but I can visualize the cover. It was a Dell Yearling book, I believe. There was a hot-air balloon, I think? And a boy with wispy curly hair and blue eyes? And a girl or woman with the name Aimee in the book. The time she goes back too is around the French Revolution? Does any of this sound right, Margaret?
While searching for this book, I found this list of time-travel romances that might nip some of y’all’s cat:
http://www.paperbackswap.com/Time-Travel-Romance/list/3642/
Some of those covers will definitely take you back in time!
My apologies if I am taking over this thread, but I have such fond memories of this book (if no memories of the title alas). I think that others are looking for this too: at Loganberrybooks.com Stump the Bookseller I found this unsolved “stumper”:
R124: rose between worlds
My stumper involves a book that I read for our school librarian in the early 1980’s. (She had me read a bunch of old books that hadn’t been checked out in years to determine if we should keep them.) The book that I am looking for is about a girl who is somehow transported into another world. She receives cruel treatment from a woman in power. She befriends a boy/man who is somehow connected to the woman in power. I think the girl travels between the two worlds multiple times. She is drawn back to the other world by the man/boy despite the unpleasant treatment she receives. Time doesn’t operate at the same “speed” from world to world. The last time she goes back to her own world, she finds that her family has changed (father dead perhaps). The family moves away. The girl goes back to the old house and she finds a rose on the mantel that is a sign from the man/boy that she loved in the other world. The key scene in my mind is the one towards the end of the book when she finds the rose. I don’t know if it means that she will be reunited with the man/boy or if it signals the end of their relationship.
I believe I read this book in the early to mid 1970s. I think the boy/man was named Kit and the girl went back in time by going into a closet or mirror or something. I have always wondered the name and author of the book!
Might this be “Playing Beatie Bow” by Ruth Park? I don’t remember if she broke her arm, but she went back in time while playing a schoolyard game and ends up living with a family in Victorian Era Sydney. She makes friends with the children of the family, and i think the eldest boy becomes her sweetheart, and there is a whole mystery over what happens to the family in the time stream…
@Tanya – Thank you for reminding me of The Perilous Gard; I loved that book! Though it clearly isn’t the one in this HaBO – it’s all set in the 16th century, rather than being time-travel.
@Meg, A Traveler in Time was just about my favorite book when I was around 11, too, and like you, I kept checking it out of the library every couple months. Then we moved 🙁 – and I got older. In my 20s I started looking for it and discovered it was out of print. Time passed, and I have my own daughters, so I looked again a few years ago, and found it was back in print. Bought it immediately for my oldest. All those years later I would still remember details of the story from time to time. I wonder why it stuck in our memories so strongly? Wonderful book anyway.
This sounds like a novel by Caroline B. Cooney which came out in the early-mid ’90’s called “Both Sides of Time”
Margaret, in your book… does it take place in a rural USA, perhaps in the late 19th century. This sounds so very familiar…
Oooh! Ooh! Could the OP be thinking of Jesammy (sp?) by Barbara Sleigh. I haven’t read it, but it was published in the 60s and synopsis sounds right. I can’t provide a link on my phone but there is a review on the blog Charlotte’s Library.
She bumps her head and there is a boy named Kit. I hope this one is it!
Ooh ooh ooh! Here’s a link to its Wikipedia page (spoilers abound just FYI): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessamy
I’ve never been big on time travel, or so I thought. But man reading through these I apparently read a lot more when I was a teenager than I thought. Completely forgot about Cooney’s series (which I probably still have somewhere), Pearson’s (whose stuff I love, especially her Guests of War series, which took forever to remember and I also did a HaBO for).
When this first got posted the only one I could remember reading was Judith O’Brien’s “Timeless Love”. It might be time to catalog my YA books. 🙂
You guys and your enthusiasm are so wonderful, and I now have lots of books to look up and enjoy. But I’m the one who put in the HABO, and none of the answers seem right. I’m pretty sure it took place in New England (Rhode Island? Nantucket? or maybe even Long Island?), and the “contemporary” part would have been the early 60s, with the back in time part the 1800s in the same location. Keeping my fingers crossed that this might further jolt someone’s memory, but in the meantime, I’m off to check that Goodreads link. Thank you all so much!
@Liz–So fun to meet someone else who was entranced by this book! Our library system has it (PDX, OR), and I’m just waiting for the right moment this evening to settle down on the couch and crack the book open. SQUEEEE.
This reminds me of a book I read as a kid. I remember that the main character went back in time and ended up in the same place but in the 1800s and met two kids, brother and sister. I think the brother was Christopher/Kit. There was something about a fire and the main char. wanted to set things right by making sure the past-kids didn’t die in the fire. If any of this sounds familiar, I’ll keep searching. I re-read this one more than once!