Playing Beatie Bow

Like with my first recommendation, I feel that this book appeals to a desire for adventure that we all had as kids. Who didn’t dream of Time Travel adventures as a kid? And again, as an adult, I have of course come to realize that I’d not last a day if I were to fall into this sort of adventure – and although time travel is supposedly possible, albeit only as a one-way journey due to the nature of time-dilation, the undertaking of such a journey, and the physical aspects of what is involved, I’d never want to do it… show more.

I think of this book more as a ‘time slip' novel, than a 'time travel' novel, because the main character, Lynette Kirk (later calling herself Abigail), doesn’t mean to go back in time, she slips back into the past, enabled by a fragment of old cloth.  

The novel is set in Australia, and I read it whilst living there so it had a particular resonance. The notion of place and our relationship to it runs through the whole book. Ruth Park used real places in Sydney for her setting, focusing much of the story in the Rocks, which was a… show more.