With all the hoopla surrounding a recent WSJ article which Shall Not Be Named, I noticed there are a lot of adult readers who, for various reasons have avoided/shied away from YA. This is part of a series of posts where I recommend “gateway” novels– novels that will help ease reluctant adult readers into the Behemoth known as the YA world.
In honor of the season 6 part 2 premier of Doctor Who, which aired last night, I give you time travel in YA!
*Happy nerd dance*
All synopses taken from Goodreads.
1. Timeless by Alexandra Monir
When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor’s world, she is forced to uproot her life and move across the country to New York City, to live with the wealthy, aristocratic grandparents she’s never met. In their old Fifth Avenue mansion filled with a century’s worth of family secrets, Michele discovers a diary that hurtles her back in time to the year 1910. There, in the midst of the glamorous Gilded Age, Michele meets the young man with striking blue eyes who has haunted her dreams all her life – a man she always wished was real, but never imagined could actually exist. And she finds herself falling for him, into an otherworldly, time-crossed romance.
Michele is soon leading a double life, struggling to balance her contemporary high school world with her escapes into the past. But when she stumbles upon a terrible discovery, she is propelled on a race through history to save the boy she loves – a quest that will determine the fate of both of their lives.
2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
A mysterious island.
An abandoned orphanage.
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.
3. Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier
Gwyneth Shepherd’s sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era! Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon–the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.
4. The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma
A Map of Time by Felix J. Palma. Set in Victorian London with characters real and imagined, The Map of Time is a page-turner that boasts a triple play of intertwined plots in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigage purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence. What happens if we change history?
5. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Meg’s father mysteriously disappears after experimenting with the fifth dimension of time travel. Determined to rescue him, Meg and her friends must outwit the forces of evil on a heart-stopping journey through space and time.
6. The Ancient One by T.A. Barron 
When Kate travels to Blade, Oregon, to spend a quiet vacation with her Aunt Melanie, she has no idea of the adventures that lie ahead. Blade, Oregon is home of the magical Lost Crater, in which a grove of giant readwood trees has remained untouched for thousands of years. Now the ancient grove has become the center of a major dispute between those who wish to save this rare sanctuary and the local loggers who see Lost Crater as their last hope to rejuvenate their dying mill town. Caught up in the struggle, Kate feels compelled to learn more and decides to follow a trail into the crater, which, as legend has it, was made by the ancient Halami people believed to have once lived in the region. But for Kate, what starts out as a day’s discovery soon turns intor a life’s journey. With the help of an ancient walking stick, Kate is thrust back in time five hundred years. Quickly befriended by a young Halami girl, Laioni, Kate learns that not much as changed in five centuries as she is caught in the middle of a battle for the same wilderness. Confronted by a myrid of strange and frightening creatures, including the trickster Kandeldandel and the evil Gashra, who is bend on destroying everything he cannot control, Kate must complete her quest and return to her own time. But to do so, she must not only discover the truth behind her own beliefs, but also unravel an ancient and wondrous riddle bearing the knowledge of life’s intricate and fragile balance.
