Category: Young Adult/Teen ISBN-10: 1605520101
Pages: 162
Copyright: June 23, 2008
ISBN-13: 9781605520100
What would you do if you could travel through time?
What if it was only a one-way trip?
When ten-year-old Aaron moved from the big city to the middle of Amish country, he felt transported to a different and simpler time and place.
But after finding a faded and long forgotten diary page of a boy gone missing over one hundred years earlier, Aaron began an adventure more wondrous and exciting than he could have ever imagined.
Befriended by a local farm girl named Jake, together they search for answers to this century long mystery and uncover the secrets of an astounding cavern that will take them to the edge of time itself.
Professional Reviews
The Time Cavern is a Journey You Won't Soon Forget!,
I immediately think of the phrase, "judging a book by its cover," as I write this. Face it. We all do it, which is all the more reason for an author like Todd Fonseca to spend so much time on the cover of The Time Cavern. It is both appealing and eye catching. I hope that Todd's hard work pays off because readers will definitely not be disappointed with what's behind this cover.
As the story unfolds, the reader is introduced to a ten year old boy named Aaron who is camping on his own for the first time. Of course, all ten year olds have a wild imagination and long for a sense of independence, so Aaron immediately begins to worry about the sounds he hears outside the tent. He also senses that he is being watched. Fonseca dedicates the book to his own son, also named Aaron. As I nestled into the story, I imagined the author creating this story as a bedtime tale for his son. If that is the case, the author has done an excellent job of transpiring his story to the page.
Aaron decides to investigate the noises outside the tent, but before doing so, he records his thoughts in a notebook. Here, we learn that Aaron is actually camping in the backyard of his new home, in which his family just moved into the day before. The beginning of the story is set up as a nice metaphor for the entire book. You may be frowning at the thought of yet another time travel story based on the title alone, but the young protagonist leaving a big concrete city and moving to the corn fields of Amish country makes for a nice set-up in my opinion which many young readers can relate to.
Fonseca has a talent for appealing to a young audience in the use of his subject matter....independence, moving to a new home, making friends, being afraid, exploration, and the use of the imagination, etc. Outside of the young boy's adventures the author also uses a nice mix of dialog to keep his story moving, evenly exposing the reader to other characters including Aaron's parents.
Aaron soon forms a friendship with a neighboring girl named Jake, who tells him his house is haunted. This sends Aaron into a frenzy to investigate the noises he's been hearing, along with the mysterious eyes he sees in the old family barn. While exploring the barn, Aaron finds the page from a diary of a young boy who lived over 100 years ago. The writings on the page echo the mysterious feeling Aaron has been experiencing..."hearing your name being called by the wind."
The next day, Aaron seeks out Jake to ask her about what she had said about his house and what she might know about the mysterious wind. He shows her the diary page he found and the two begin a journey they will not soon forget as they set out to solve the mystery of the Amish boy who wrote the diary entry, the howling wind that whispers your name, and an ancient cavern filled with even more secrets.
Todd Fonseca's book is an adventure story that both kids and adults will love. It feeds the imagination, just as the tale itself builds upon the eagerness of its characters to solve the mystery. Fonseca's main characters, Aaron and Jake, are believable and come alive on the page through their real-life dialog and eagerness to learn the truth. The author does a great job of keeping the momentum going with nicely paced conflict and interest, which will definitely keep the pages turning.
Shannon Yarbrough, lulubookreview
Reminiscent of Madeline L'Engel
[The Time Cavern] reminded me of Madeleine L'Engel's sci-fi/science-themed children's books - an intelligent youth literature combination of adventure, fantasy and science.
Aileen Cho - Associate Editor, McGraw Hill
Time Travel so Good I Almost Forgot to Bring the Helium
The Time Cavern is a concise, well-written, and endearing story. It's highly suitable for young adult readers: it was mature and clever, yet not overly complex. As an adult, I also enjoyed the book quite a bit -- it reminded me of the Encyclopedia Brown books I used to read when I was a kid, where the hero won the day through intellect and keen observation.
The story is one of exploration and friendship, as Aaron and Jake investigate the source of mysterious voices on the wind, and become entangled in the associated legend of an Amish boy who disappeared one hundred years ago. The story takes place in the quiet farmlands of Amish country, and Aaron learns about the Amish as he plays junior detective. The two friends' adventures are challenged by everything from the rural expansiveness of the country (how does a ten year old kid get all the way into town to look up a census report?) to various riddles involving chemistry, astronomy, mechanics, and history. While the plot might seem a bit obvious to an adult reader, there are definite twists to keep younger audiences enthralled. The characters are well defined and extremely likable, and reading the book invoked a feeling of tense exploration, just like what Aaron and Jake must have felt as they first entered the Time Cavern.
In a nutshell: wonderful, creative, and inspiring!
An additional note for time-travel enthusiasts (I'm one myself, having written my own time travel novel) -- the Time Cavern introduces us to what might just be the most original time machine concept ever - not to give anything away, but if you're a nut about time-travel, this is worth for that alone.
Eric Knapp, author of Cluck!
Todd A. Fonseca's "The Time Cavern" is a fantastic read for children and adults alike. Todd has a knack for making the characters realistic and likeable, whether they be Aaron's parents or the main characters, 10 year old friends Aaron and Jake. I laughed many times while reading the book at the way Todd skillfully phrased certain things.
For the adult, the read takes you back to a time when the world is filled with adventure and mystery, begging to be discovered.
For the young reader, both boys and girls would appreciate the excitement of this book, certainly inspiring them to explore the wonders of our world beyond the television.
The Time Cavern is definitely an enjoyable page-turning read and could easily be turned into a series of books. It incorporates the various degrees of friendship and trust, and makes us able to appreciate what we learned in school...ie: history, the Amish culture, farming corn, constellations, and uncovering mysteries through the wonders of science.
I could go on but I don't want to spoil it! Enjoy!!!
Todd Fonseca's "The Time Cavern" is a story of how a 10 year old boy named Aaron, freshly transplanted from Minneapolis to the Pennsylvania Amish countryside and his new friend Jake (a know-it-all girl something like Hermione Granger without the wand) stumble across a hidden time machine and find out how it sparked a spooky legend of a young Amish boy disappearing a century before.
Fonseca tells the story mostly from Aaron's point of view. His story hits on some YA-friendly topics: moving to a new city, making new friends, dealing with younger brothers, asking for independence, making mistakes, and exploration. Lots of exploration, which is good, because the reader ends up learning a bit about corn combines, the Internet, the Amish way of life, ultraviolet lights, and railroad tracks. Lots of other stuff too, which should make the book interesting to 10 year old boys.
Fonseca has Aaron and Jake put into a lot of problem solving situations as they attempt to unravel the mystery of the missing boy. I found myself rooting for them as they struggle to put the clues together.
In a sense, there's two time travels in the book: the 100-year trip that the Amish boy took, and the "time travel" that Aaron took when his family moved into horse-buggy and buttonless Amish country. It gave a nice parallel and theme to the book: I got to see how both Aarons dealt with time differences--one going back to the past, and one coming up to the future.
"The Time Cavern" ends with the promise of future adventures of Aaron and Jake, and I'm looking forward to traveling through time with them again.
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