A spoiled, contemporary English schoolgirl travels back in time to 1935, where she must adjust to a different life style, make new friends and complete a mysterious task.
Twelve-year-old Flora Fox resents leaving her pampered life with her doting parents while their London home is renovated. En route to snazzy Penrice Hall for one term, Flora naps on the train and wakes up at stuffy St. Winifred’s boarding school in 1935. Flummoxed to find herself without such 21st-century necessities as cell phones, laptops, jeans, lattes and hot showers, Flora feels like an alien until she becomes attached to her three roomies: impetuous Pete, astute Pogo and gentle Dulcie. Determined to make the best of the rigid boarding school with its eccentric teachers and schoolgirl rivalries, Flora actually becomes a nicer person. The more she appreciates the past, the more she treasures “all the things in the future she had always taken for granted.” Discovering her roommates have pulled her into 1935 through a summoning charm, Flora knows she’ll remain in the past until she completes her mission. Told in a third-person, past-tense narration with schoolgirl humor and perspective, this time-travel tale convincingly links England of 1935 to the present.
A ripping English boarding-school story with a perceptive heroine and time-travel twist guaranteed to appeal to modern schoolgirls. (Fantasy. 10-13)
