Season of the Sandstorms

Season of the Sandstorms is one of Mary Pope Osborne's time-travel adventures for 7 year olds. This one drops Jack and Annie in a desert with no idea which way to walk.

What happens

Merlin has sent them to Baghdad, more than a thousand years ago, to help a ruler share what he knows with the world. His instructions come as four rhymes, and none of them make much sense yet.

Ride a ship of the desert, says the first one. Jack has no clue what that means.

They also have a little book of magic rhymes from their friends Teddy and Kathleen. Ten of them. Each one can be used once, and Merlin has told them to use magic wisely.

So of course Annie wants to use one straight away.

The rhyme they pick is meant to make helpers appear out of nowhere. What it appears to do instead is start a sandstorm.

That little gap between what they asked for and what they got is the best joke in the book, and your reader will work it out a page or two before Jack does.

The part that stays with you is the caravan. Mamoon, the merchant who takes them in, is unhurried and kind and asks proper questions. They shake date palms until the fruit falls, they drink strong tea sitting on a rug, and they learn that the camels will eat thornbushes, sticks and your saddlebags given half a chance.

It is a gentler book than the cover suggests. Annie names her camel Cutie. Jack does not think either camel is remotely cute.

Something to flag. There is talk of bandits prowling the desert, and Mamoon says he hopes the children's family has not been attacked by them. Nothing comes of it in those early chapters, but a nervous reader may hold on to it for a while.

Annie also tells the caravan a large fib about a missing family, which is worth a word if your child is going through a literal phase about lying.

What to read next

There is another Merlin mission in the library, A Crazy Day With Cobras. Same rhyme book, same pair of enchanters behind it, and sixteenth century India turns out to be rather less safe than the desert.