Her story is told briskly enough to keep the reader's interest, while allowing for plenty of description that brings the place and people alive. 'When I'm in my eighties, I'll find out what happens to Harry Potter' (page 57).

She's naturally very unhappy about being seemingly stuck in 1935, but appealingly, a more trivial thought crosses her mind: 'Great,' she muttered.

Miri is a lovely heroine-smart and imaginative. Miri must figure out the magic of time travel to save her new friend. It's clear that Horst is a no-good thief, and every day the threat of his violent temper hangs over Molly's head. Molly is an unwanted orphaned, living in fear of her bullying cousin Horst. When she looks through it, she finds herself back in time, in the 1930s, face to face with Molly, another little girl who is even more lonely and out of place in her family than Miri herself. With one set of twins (boys) a year older than her, and another set of twins (girls), five years younger, Miri feels like the odd one out-the unremarkable, lonely, middle.īut exploring her bedroom, she finds a mysterious piece of glass taped to the wall. At last, eleven-year old Miri is going to have a room of her own, a strange shaped little attic room, away from the rest of her family. Miri and her family have moved into a big old house out in the country. A highly satisfying classic-in-the-making full of spine-tingling moments, both books in the delightful time-travelling Molly and Miri series is perfect for the whole family.The Magic Half, by Annie Barrows (Bloomsbury, 2008, middle grade, 211 pp). Without meaning to, she has found a way to travel back in time to 1935 where she discovers Molly, a girl her own age very much in need of a loving family. But when Miri gets sent to her room after accidentally bashing her big brother on the head with a shovel, she finds herself in the same room. The family has just moved to an old farmhouse in a new town, where the only good thing seems to be Miri's ten-sided attic bedroom. Miri is the non-twin child in a family with two sets of them-older brothers and younger sisters. From New York Times bestselling author of the Ivy and Bean series and blockbuster The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society comes a sweet and charming time travel story.

The magic half by annie barrows