Even though my kids are older, there are still certain books that catch my attention and one of those are fun, early chapter books. I think it is because I still remember spending ages searching on the internet for reviews about entertaining early chapter books for my son. So now, when I hear about a potential early chapter book that would have interested us I am still keen to know about it (I always think if I spent ages searching for something then there will be other home educating parents who are also doing the same time consuming search).
Although my son has always been a good reader he was always a bit fussy about the books that he read – they had to be entertaining or he would honestly just read a few pages and put it down. The book had to have something to grab his attention and then it had to keep him hooked. So when I first saw these Time Machine Next Door books I thought the idea of a crazy inventor, creating a time machine and then using it to travel back in time would have appealed to my son, so I decided to ask for a review copy to see if I was right or not.
The concept of these books (I think there are another 2 in this series as well), is quite fun. Sunil lives next door to Alex. Alex is a crazy inventor who just happens to have created a time machine that is powered on boredom (I loved this little detail – they have to feed to machine boring items for it to work). But as you can imagine the time travel does not always go according to plan. This means the two friends find themselves in some interesting situations, meeting famous people and experiencing different time periods. Luckily they always get pulled back to the current period before anything too dangerous happens (and yes there is a Kiwi bird that is always around causing chaos).
In both of these books they traveled back to some very interesting times and places. My favourite was when Sunil meet the young child who grew up to become Genghis Khan and he witnessed how vastly different Genghis Khan’s childhood was. Sunil also met Rosa Parks, and got to experience the British Civil war, Roman Invasion and the Witch Trials.
The story is sweet and they have fun adventures but the best part for me were all the footnotes. This is how the author explains who the people are and what happened in that specific time or place.
And I loved that the author even included a bit of humour in some of these factual footnotes (this is exactly the kind of thing that would have kept my son interested).
If you are like me and enjoy Historical Fiction then this is a great way of getting your kids hooked onto the same genre. It is Historical Fiction written for the 7 to 9 age range. It is fun, engaging and still manages to be very informative. I would recommend these as great early chapter books. And the bonus is not only are you kids reading but they are also learning about interesting people and fascinating events.
To Find out more about this series you can have a look at the publishers website here – Time machine next door series
And for those of you who are looking for Amazon links here they are (yes they are affiliate)
Admin – I did ask for review copies of these 2 books.
I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.
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