Stranger from Somewhere in Time Book

Helen and her friends assemble a time capsule, hoping that someone from the future will find it and send it back, but things turn out differently than anyone expected.

Jeanne K. Pettenati - Children's Literature

Classroom friends contribute an odd assortment of items for a time capsule that they bury overnight. Their teacher has given them a weekend homework assignment: to think about what they would like people to find in the distant future. And so the friends collect sunglasses, a jar of anti-wrinkle cream, a pocket calculator, a frisbee, a disposable diaper, monopoly money, a whistle and more. Foxy, one of the friends, explains that a Time Traveler could find their capsule 10,000 years from now, but travel back to the present. The next morning, the children find a cassette tape buried in the same hole as their time capsule. The tape instructs them to meet Morlag Kim, the "Stranger from Somewhere in Time" that afternoon at the "time gate" close to where they left their capsule. This chapter book has a promising beginning, but the story is a bit of a let down. Readers are given one or two facts about the characters, but it isn't enough to make them memorable. And thoughts about what future beings might be like are never explored. The funky illustrations will certainly appeal to some readers. A positive aspect of the book is that the characters are diverse. This title is a chapter book in the publisher's "Yellow Bananas" series. 2002 (orig. 1994), Crabtree Publishing