Time travel

Bethany Loveridge is an author-illustrator who has always loved storytelling and the natural world. She has been a youth worker, a film and television teacher, a curriculum specialist and a museum nerd (not the official title). Today we’re chatting to Bethany about her novel Harper Wells: Renegade Timeline Officer.

From the publisher:

Harper Wells finally gets a bedroom of her own, away from her annoying big brother. But on the first night in her new bed, she wakes up in the past and meets a troubled young girl named Edie. Harper is thrown into a world of time-travelling spies as she risks her life to find a missing girl before time runs out.

The publisher provided a reading copy of this book.

If you found a way to time travel, which time in history would you choose to travel to?

If I found my own Wollemi Bed, I’d love to travel back in time to meet a thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). They think the thylacine went extinct in the 1930s, which was a miserable period called the Great Depression. So I would go back, smuggle a thylacine pup in my hoodie, and hightail it back to the present. Imagine how many species I could save!

What gave you the idea for a bed to be the device that enables Harper (Harrie) to travel through time?

The story idea started with a dream I had about the Wollemi Pine; a native Australian tree sometimes called the ‘dinosaur tree’ because it was thought to be extinct. So my time travelling ‘device’ needed to be made from a tree, and I thought a bed would be more exciting than a chair (though I do know a brilliant story involving a magical wooden wardrobe)! I also liked the idea of falling asleep and falling back in time.

Can you tell us a bit about why you chose Edie to be the first person from history that Harper is assigned to keep watch on?

Once I had dreamed up a time-travelling bed, it was time to choose an historical person for my main character to visit. I knew I wanted a female character from the past, someone brave and kind who could help Harrie develop the same attributes. I didn’t know much about Edith Cowan (except she was on our $50 banknote), so I had to research! Pretty soon, I knew Edie was the right character. I discovered she was passionate about improving children’s heath, the rights of women (she brought in an act that allowed women to be lawyers), and social welfare. Edith Cowan (nee Brown) had a rough childhood but an IMPRESSIVE impact. Even though lots of people gave her a hard time, she became the first female elected to an Australian parliament – how awesome is that?

Did you have any favourite time travel (or time slip) books you read when you were growing up?

Not really! When I was a kid, I liked reading fantasy stories best. Fantasy is still my favourite, but now I have read MANY time slip and time travel books, and I love almost too many to list! My favourites include Elsewhere Girls by Emily Gale and Nova Weetman, Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones, and the World Between Blinks stories by Amie Kaufman and Ryan Graudin (these aren’t strictly time slip, but feature a world of lost historical places and objects). Also, I have always enjoyed ‘portal fantasy’ books and television shows, and time travel is pretty similar – you just end up in another time rather than another universe.

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?

Harper Wells: Time Walker (book two in the trilogy) comes out in September! This time, we’ll meet Constance Stone, who was Australia’s first female medical doctor. I’m also over-the-moon excited for my new junior fiction (for readers 6–9) series that starts next month with Josie Mack and the MEGA Division. Illustrated by the delightful Jade Goodwin, it’s about a nine-year-old girl who joins an underground (literally and metaphorically) agency of talking animals. So. Much. Fun.

Harper Wells: Renegade Timeline Officer is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

AWESOME EXTRAS

Download the Teachers’ Notes for this book

Visit Bethany Loveridge’s website for more about her and her books

Shirley Marr is an award-winning author and first generation Chinese-Australian living in sunny Perth. Shirley describes herself as having a Western Mind and an Eastern Heart and writes in the middle where both collide. She bases her stories on her own personal experiences of migration and growing up in Australia. Today we’re chatting to Shirley about her novel Countdown to Yesterday.

The cover of a children's novel: Countdown to Yesterday by Shirley Marr

Image shows a photo of author Shirley Marr, a first generation Chinese-Australian. Shirley has short brown hair and bright red lipstick. She's wearing a white button-through shirt with a black bow feature, and a leopard skin print skirt. She's sitting with her hands in her lap.

From the publisher:

James wishes he could go back in time. Back to when his mum and dad were together, when he had one home, when his family laughed and climbed hills and went to the movies. After meeting the enigmatic Yan, a girl who looks at the world differently, James discovers time travel might not be impossible after all. But if James can live forever in one of his six favourite memories, which one will he choose?

Can you tell us how you choose a title for your books?

Sometimes the title is the very first thing that I come with, but with Countdown to Yesterday, the quest to find the perfect title was a very long and drawn-out process that ended up involving my literary agent, my Australian, UK and US editors! I guess trying to find something clever, that also summed up all the big ideas in the book, was quite tricky. My working title was Tin Foil Tin Machine and other suggestions (among many more) included The Yesterday Machine, My Life in Six Memories, See You Yesterday, If We Go Back, Ground Control to Major Tom and My Favourite Yesterdays. I am interested in what the readers think of these alternatives!

If someone turned up with a time machine and offered to send you back in time … would you decide to go?

I don’t think I would try and go back to change anything, even the very worst of my memories, in case it changes the life I am living today. Right now, I am a full-time author who gets to write every single day and I feel I’m living my best life. Even though it took a long and hard time for me to get to this position. If I had a chance though, to be part of the audience at the very last Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars concert, I would definitely say yes! I would just watch very enthusiastically and be very careful not to do anything to affect history.

What’s your favourite cake in the Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book? (Have you ever had it for your birthday cake?)

That is the hardest question because I love them all. I’d have to say that like James in my book, I think the rocket cake is the best. I have never had it for my birthday, but I am hoping someone will bake it for my birthday next year.

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?

I am hoping that I can go back to Christmas Island either this year or the next. I grew up there as a child before arriving to Perth on the mainland and I would love to write an authentic and unique middle grade about the jungles, the basalt cliffs and the unique birdlife. I think the way that the red crabs migrate down to the beaches each year is a beautiful analogy for human migration.

Could you suggest a word prompt for young writers wanting to start a new story?

How about the word TIME?

Countdown to Yesterday is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

AWESOME EXTRAS

Read the first chapter of Countdown to Yesterday

Read a review of the book by Gabriel, age 13

Download a Countdown to Yesterday Word Search

Download the Teachers’ Notes for this book

Visit Shirley Marr’s website for more about her and her books