Countdown to Yesterday
by Shirley Marr
Intermediate    Simon    272 pp.
6/24    9781665948517    $17.99
e-book ed.  9781665948531    $10.99

After his parents unexpectedly announce their divorce, eleven-year-old James decides his new friend Yan’s time machine might give him a chance to go back to a happier past. When James’s mother moves out, he must adapt to frequent switches between two homes and to parents redefining themselves at midlife. Some of the changes are, in his opinion, improvements, such as his mother’s first-ever entry into his school’s annual cake-making fundraiser; others, such as meeting Yan on his route to school with Mom, take some time to appreciate. When Yan’s time machine doesn’t have the intended effect (it’s a proxy server that lets her access the 1990s-era internet), she goes to work adapting it to help James. Chapter headings count down the time remaining until their launch, and James reflects on experiences that will never happen again now that his parents have split up. When Yan’s machine takes him back to those perfect moments, though, he sees them from a different perspective and discovers that the divorce was not such a surprise after all. Marr effectively blends elements of an adventure story with a quieter, character-driven plot. Subjects such as racial identity (James and Yan, like Marr, are both Chinese Australian, but Yan is a recent immigrant) and bullying are seamlessly integrated into the story, and James’s realization that the adults around him are more complex than he’d realized is well handled. An enjoyable read with an innovative twist on the time-travel narrative.

From the ">September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.