The Time Machine Next Door: Rule Breakers and Kiwi Keepers
The Time Machine Next Door: Rebellions and Super Boots
Iszi Lawrence, illustrated by Rebecca Bagley
Bloomsbury Education

In the first story, having failed at the first fraction in his maths test at school, Sunil runs into the toilets crying. His pretence at being ill results in his being sent home sick from school. Sunil is fed up: no cricket practice for him, insists Dad who asks Aunt Alex – she with the ‘Boring Machine’ – to babysit for the evening. Perhaps things won’t be so bad after all. However Alex refuses to let Sunil dabble with her potentially dangerous time machine. Creating a distraction, the determined boy sneaks next door into her house (although sneaks isn’t quite the right word for her creates a big disturbance with a ladder). Having located the Boring Machine and pressed the ON button, the next thing he knows is rather than going back a little bit to before his maths test as intended, the machine malfunctions and he’s talking to a girl who tells him her name is Rosa.

It’s Rosa Parks who becomes a leader in the civil rights movement in America.

This is only the first of his travels through time in Rule Breakers and Kiwi Keepers. Before the time machine is fixed, Sunil meets a very young Genghis Khan, so Alex tells him on his return; and then a young Lady Elizabeth who, despite what she says to Sunil, becomes the queen of England. All the while Wiki, the kiwi is annoyingly making his presence felt.

In Rebellions and Super Boots, the loss of his lucky T-shirt just as he’s about to go to his cousin’s house to watch the India v South Africa test match sets Sunil off on another crazy adventure whizzing back through time with Alex and the pesky Wiki. Confusingly for Sunil, there’s another Alex in this book who, except for her metal Doc Marten boots, looks exactly like his neighbour. Apparently she’s Alex-from-the-future. What begins as a search for Sunil’s T-shirt quickly turns into a visit to Roman Britain circa 31CE (time to polish up your Latin perhaps?) where Sunil is instrumental in saving the life of Caractacus but is in Alex’s bad books for being responsible for the loss of her Talk Torc.

Two further forays into the past see Sunil oddly clad in underwear and shirt delivering a message supposedly from Lord Stanley to the King, and trying to get back Alex’s Talk Torc. His third time trip takes him to the 17th century when he has to contend with a witch trial of his own. I learned a new word in that episode – pilgarlick. You’ll need to get a copy of the book to discover its meaning.
All’s well that ends well with Sunil back in the present concluding that he can cope with life without his lucky T-shirt.

Quirky assuredly but Iszi Lawrence’s fun books offer insights into many aspects of history that young readers can then delve further into. The time machine might be powered by boredom but children certainly won’t be bored by Sunil’s forays into the past amusingly illustrated by Rebecca Bagley.

For lower KS2 classrooms and home collections.