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About Time Traveling With A Hamster
Product Description Back to the Future meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in this original, poignant, race-against-time story about a boy who travels back to 1984 to save his father’s life. My dad died twice. Once when he was thirty-nine and again four years later, when he was twelve. On his twelfth birthday, Al Chaudhury receives a letter from his dead father. It directs him to the bunker of their old house, where Al finds a time machine (an ancient computer and a tin bucket). The letter also outlines a mission: travel back to 1984 and prevent the go-kart accident that will eventually take his father’s life. But as Al soon discovers, whizzing back thirty years requires not only imagination and courage, but also lying to your mom, stealing a moped, and setting your school on fire—oh, and keeping your pet hamster safe. With a literary edge and tons of commerical appeal, this incredible debut has it all: heart, humor, vividly imagined characters, and a pitch-perfect voice. Review A New York Public Library Best Book for Kids, 2016 "Nods to classic time travel stories will delight some readers; those merely looking for a page-turning adventure will find that and more."— Kirkus Reviews starred review "In the end, Al cleverly engineers a total win, and if that seems unlikely considering the hazards of meddling with the past, readers won’t begrudge him." — Booklist starred review About the Author Ross Welford worked as a business journalist before becoming a freelance writer and television producer. He has worked on shows such as The Big Breakfast, The Morning, and Bridezillas. This is his first novel. Follow @rosswelford on Twitter. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One Just across the road from the house where we used to live before Dad died (the first time) is an alleyway that leads to the next street with a patch of grass with some bushes and straggly trees growing on it. I called it “the jungle” when I was little because in my mind that’s what it was like, but looking at it now, I can see that it’s just a plot of land for a house that hasn’t been built yet. And that’s where I am, still in my full-face motorbike helmet, sitting hidden in a bush in the dead of night, waiting to break into my old house. There’s an old fried-chicken box that someone’s thrown there, and I can smell something foul and sour that I think might be fox’s poo. The house is dark; there are no lights on. I’m looking up at my old bedroom window, the small one over the front door. By day, Chesterton Road is pretty quiet--a long curve of small, semidetached houses made of reddish bricks. When they were first built, they must all have looked exactly the same, but now people have added fancy gates, garage extensions, even a massive monkey puzzle tree outside old Mr. Frasier’s, so these days they’re all a bit different. Now, at nearly one a.m., there’s no one about, and I’ve seen enough films and TV shows about criminals to know exactly how not to behave, and that’s suspiciously. If you act normal, no one notices you. If I wandered nervously up and down the street waiting for the right time, then someone might spot me going backward and forward looking at the houses, and call the police. On the other hand, if I’m just walking down the street, then that’s all I’m doing, and it’s as good as being invisible. (Keeping the motorbike helmet on is a gamble, or what Grandpa Byron calls “a calculated risk.” If I take it off, someone might notice that I’m nowhere near old enough to be riding a moped; if I keep it on, that looks suspicious--so I’m still of two minds about it. Anyway, it won’t be on for long.) I’ve worked all this out on the journey here. About a year ago, when we still lived here, the local council turned off every second streetlight in a money-saving experiment, so where I’ve stopped the moped it is really pretty dark. As casually as I can, I come out of the bushes,
