Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford is a science fiction story for 9 year olds that opens with the line “My dad died twice.”<\/p>\n
Al Chaudhury is twelve. His dad died four years ago. His mum has since married Steve, so Al lives with Steve and a stepsister who tells him hamsters are just rats for babies.<\/p>\n
Three things turn up on his birthday. A Newcastle shirt he doesn’t want. A hamster, which Steve names Alan Shearer. And a fat envelope in his dad’s handwriting that he isn’t allowed to open for sixteen hours.<\/p>\n
Inside is a job. Get into their old house, find what’s hidden under the cellar, and use it to go back to 1984 and stop his dad dying.<\/p>\n
Your reader is probably picturing something with thrusters and flashing panels. Al was too. What’s down there is a laptop and a tin tub from a garden centre.<\/p>\n
Al tells you all of this himself and he’s brilliant company. He hands out proper tips while he’s doing it, like the one about not waving your torch about when you break into a house, because a moving light gets noticed and a still one doesn’t.<\/p>\n
He also keeps interrupting himself in brackets to add something he thinks you ought to know first. It really does feel like a twelve year old explaining a mad week to you at speed.<\/p>\n
The best person in the whole thing is Grandpa Byron. Saffron robes, biker boots, a grey plait, a gold tooth and an accent that’s Geordie and Indian at the same time. He trained his memory as a boy and can hear a shuffled pack of cards read out once and give it straight back. He owns no photographs, because he reckons the best pictures are in his head.<\/p>\n
There’s a chapter that’s simply twelve facts about him. It might be your reader’s favourite part.<\/p>\n
Something to know before you start. Al’s dad is dead before the first page and missing him is the engine of the whole story, so it isn’t light under the jokes. There’s a stepdad Al can’t warm to, a stepsister being genuinely unkind, and a quiet moment where Al works out that his grandmother’s parents probably stayed away from her wedding because Grandpa Byron is Indian.<\/p>\n
If your child is raw about losing someone close, this could sit too near the bone. If they enjoy an ordinary kid being handed something impossible and simply getting on with it, Al will be a friend for life.<\/p>\n
Ross Welford pulls the same trick in The 1,000 year old Boy, which is in the library and pitched a little older. Alfie Monk lives on the same stretch of the Tyne, has been alive since the Vikings came, and would very much like to stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford is a science fiction story for 9 year olds that opens with the line “My dad died twice.” Al Chaudhury is twelve. His dad died four years ago. His mum has since married Steve, so Al lives with Steve and a stepsister who tells him hamsters are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11134,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8788,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The 1,000 year old Boy","lr_seo_hook":"A letter from his dead dad, a cellar and a time machine made of a tin tub."},"book_tag":[1046],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[860],"class_list":["post-9586","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-sci-fi-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-ross-welford"],"yoast_title":"Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A letter from his dead dad, a cellar and a time machine made of a tin tub. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n