Tumbleglass (Kate Constable, A&U Children’s)

Rowan is helping her big sister Ash with painting her room when suddenly they find themselves in 1999, at a party in the very same house. While Ash wants to experience partying ‘like it’s 1999’, Rowan accidentally meddles with her family’s timeline and when she returns to her present, Ash is missing. More importantly, the people in the present seem to be slowly forgetting Ash ever existed! Unable to tell anyone in her family that she and Ash time travelled, Rowan turns to her neighbour Verity (whom she has long suspected of being magical) for help. To try and rescue Ash as well as put her timeline back together, Rowan travels back to various times and in the process learns about herself, her family and her home’s history. A well-woven story that travels through many different time periods, Kate Constable’s Tumbleglass is an adventure with a dash of mystery. Exploring various relationships, this story delves into what is most important about those bonds while remaining appropriate for Rowan and the target audience’s ages. Readers will connect with the emotional journey she goes on as she discovers things about her family she never knew. Although the ending felt a little clunky compared to the rest of the story, Tumbleglass still left me wanting more and I can’t help but hope that another adventure will follow.

Anneliese Gates is a writer and works in a primary school library.

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