When James’ mum announces she is finally going to participate in the annual Summerlake Primary School Cake Competition, he is thrilled. But also suspicious since she has never participated before. Then James finds out that his mum is moving out and his parents are getting a divorce. He doesn’t understand how this has happened and why they can’t just work things out. He remembers all the good times they had together as a family, and wishes he could go back in time to when everything used to be perfect. And then he meets Yan who claims to have a time machine.
While James is obsessed with David Bowie, Yan is fascinated by obsolete technology. Her ‘time machine’ is a way of looking back at the history of web pages, but as the book is structured like a countdown, it seems that Yan and James will find a way to actually go back in time. Yan is a brilliantly self-sufficient character, although she clearly struggles to make friends as much as James – who spends his lunches in the front office with the receptionist.
This is a bittersweet coming-of-age story as James realises that his golden memories of his family are not the perfect moments he recalls, but this does help him come to terms with his parent’s divorce and this story would be of particular interest to any children whose parents are divorced – as was the case for a couple of the pupils in my Year 5 book club.
As soon as the author mentioned the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, I remembered my mum telling me about it when I was a child (its fame extended to South Africa, where I grew up) and she made the rabbit cake with the green coconut grass for one of my sister’s birthdays. I ordered a secondhand copy of the original 1980 publication and the pupils were fascinated to see the cakes mentioned in the book, although somewhat horrified at the stereotyped ‘cakes for boys’ and ‘cakes for girls’ sections.
Generally this book was hugely popular with the book club – the pupils really enjoyed the time travel element in particular, as well as the characters of James, Yan and Tiger the cat!
Thanks to Usborne and the Reading Agency for the ARC and the book group copies.
Swimming in Books 