Hardy Boys Clue Book 08 – The Time Warp Wonder

The Time Warp Wonder by Franklin W Dixon is the eighth Hardy Boys Clue Book, a science fair mystery for 7 year olds about a hamster that vanishes inside a time machine.

What happens

Frank Hardy is nine. His brother Joe is eight. They solve mysteries, and Joe carries their clue book everywhere so they can write down suspects.

It's the Friday before the Bayport Elementary science fair and everyone is setting up. Joe's entry is a lie detector helmet with bells on the sides, which looks a lot like a spaghetti strainer. Chet's is a slice of pizza he's going to leave out to see how long it takes to rot.

Phil Cohen's is a silver foil capsule the size of a person, with a wheel on it that points to different times in history. He's calling it the Time Warp Wonder. Their teacher says he'll need to show what makes it a time machine, not just say so.

That's when Adam Ackerman, the school bully, grabs Iola's pet hamster Crusty, shuts him inside the machine, and tells Phil to prove it.

Phil turns the wheel to The Prehistoric Age and presses go.

Pink mist pours out. It smells of strawberry shortcake. Everybody freezes. When it clears, Adam is sprinting out of the lunchroom and the stool inside the machine is empty.

Crusty is gone, and Phil says he doesn't yet know how to bring him back.

What makes this work for a newly confident reader is that the book stops and hands them the job. At one point it tells them to fetch a sheet of paper and write down who else could have taken the hamster, because Frank and Joe have crossed off everyone they had. Your reader gets the same list at the same moment, not a clever reveal at the end.

The clues are the kind a seven year old can actually hold. Joe thinks he sees a furry paw sticking out of Phil's hoodie pocket and then it's gone. The mist lasted about a minute and the door was reachable the whole time. Somebody ran off in a hurry when there was nothing to run from.

It's also a book about two best friends falling out, which is the bit that actually stings. Chet and Phil fall out over it, and Joe would rather have the hamster back than be right about time travel.

Nothing here is frightening. The bully is an ordinary playground bully who gets told off.

What to read next

If they want another case where the brothers have to decide whether the impossible thing is real, The Pirate Ghost sends them to a Talk Like a Pirate contest at Bayport's Pirate Palooza, complete with a parrot that can repeat any song it hears once.