The Time Garden

by Edward Eager

I couldn't get Knight's Castle, my library simply doesn't have a copy (how is that? I assume once they had the entire series and one got lost/damanged). This book is its sequel, involving the same four children (two sets of cousins). So I missed some of the references to the earlier story, and the character building, but overall I think it should stand alone. Here four kids get sent to live with an elderly relative in an old house on a cliff above the sea, while their parents are away. It turns out the thyme plants in the garden are magic, and a talking toad tells them how the herb can make them travel through time (of course). So they go on a series of adventures, landing in the middle of the Revolutionary War, later assisting escaping slaves just prior to the Civil War, visiting with Queen Elizabeth and meeting their own parents as kids (on the cannibal island from Magic by the Lake). But I just skimmed that chapter, because somehow this one just wasn't working for me. I couldn't keep my attention on the story. The characters didn't seem as vivid nor the incidents as funny as I recall in other books. It could just be my state of mind doesn't match a light read right now... That's it for Edward Eager, then. One was great, two pretty good, the other just okay.

Abandoned        193 pages, 1958