Yesterday I finished The Time Quake by Linda Buckley-Archer, the final novel in her Gideon trilogy about some kids who stumble upon the time-travel machine built by the father of one of them and find themselves back in the 18th century. Then some bad guys use the machine to go to the 21st century. And back and forth a few times. I really wanted to like this series. I'm fond of time travel stories -- I'm a minor Star Trek geek from way back and loved Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. A cover blurb from Entertainment Weekly promised it would appeal to kids who loved Harry Potter. I'm not a kid but I liked Harry Potter a lot. Unfortunately, this series mostly made me realize how good J.K. Rowling is. I was interested enough to finish three books -- but I just couldn't care all that much about what happened to any of the characters. I haven't read enough in this genre to gauge how it stacks up to other fantasy novels aimed at the grade school level -- other than my old favorites, Lloyd Alexander's Taran series. I imagine if you had a kid who liked that kind of stuff this might be worth a try. We do have all three books in the library collection. BC