World of Adventure 14 – Time Benders

Gary Paulsen's Time Benders is a time-travel adventure for 10 year olds about two boys who switch on a machine that's only supposed to work in theory.

What happens

Zack Griffin is twelve, very clever and very bored. He sits a government intelligence test mostly so he can draw his teacher as a chipmunk in the corner. In Los Angeles, Jeff Brown fills in the same test without reading the questions, because basketball practice starts straight after school.

Somehow they both win a trip to a science institute in Washington. (Jeff's score is the highest anyone has ever got, which is awkward when somebody asks him about quantum physics.)

The boys meet at the airport, share a taxi and sneak off the official tour to look at Dr Cranium's time-bending machine. Zack wants to see how it works. Jeff pokes a glass rod into a hole in the top, winds the clock backwards and leans on the power switch.

Next thing, they're standing by a desert road with water buffalo grazing and a pyramid in the distance. Is anybody coming to get them?

What follows is Ancient Egypt, a boy pharaoh about their own age and a scheming general called Horemheb. Jeff teaches the palace guards basketball using a stone ring on the wall. The king is very taken with Jeff's CD player.

It's short, fast and properly silly in places. The friendship is the best bit. Zack is all brains and hopeless at sport, Jeff is all sport and quick on his feet, and each one covers for the other when it counts.

There's a bit of peril. The general waves a sword about, the boys end up in a prison cell twice and Jeff gets knocked out cold by a basketball. Zack also mentions, from his history books, that the real king died young. It's all handled lightly and played for adventure.

Some of the gadgets will look old-fashioned to children now (a CD player, for one), and the basketball talk is very American. It's numbered 14 in the World of Adventure series, but the book introduces Zack and Jeff from scratch.

What to read next

If your reader wants more Ancient Egypt with a modern child dropped into the middle of it, try The Boy Who Stole the Pharaoh's Lunch. Seth is a class clown who lands by the Nile at a time when Tutankhamun is still a tiny child.