Playing Beatie Bow (1980)

I was surprised to find that this was a time travel story.
Fourteen year old Abigail lives in an apartment building with her mother, Kathy. She often takes the neighbours young children down to the playground. While watching them play she observes a waif like girl hiding in the shadows. One day she decides to follow this girl and suddenly finds herself in a strange but familiar location, the streets surrounding her home, but the year is 1873. She is taken in by the girl’s family as she has sprained her ankle and ends up trapped there for months until she is assisted back to the future. After being away from her parents and the comforts of modern day life she is now happy to fall in with their future plans.
I think this book is aimed at children and young adults. It was a fairly simple and predictable storyline which created vivid images of family life on The Rocks in Sydney in the late nineteenth century.
I found this interesting as I will be staying in this area in November. However I preferred The Power of Roses by this author as it didn't use the time travel gimmick, but then the young would enjoy this, probably. ( )

Abigail is dismayed to learn that her mother and father are contemplating getting back together and moving to another country to make a fresh start. She can’t understand why her mother would agree to take her father back, after he left her mother and the family for a young woman he met at work. Then Abigail suddenly and unexpectedly finds that she has traveled back in time to 1870’s Australia. After befriending people in the earlier time, Abigail is finally able to return to her own time with a deeper understanding of relationships.

The details of life in Australia almost a hundred and fifty years ago were fascinating. The speech patterns author Ruth Park used for her characters from the 1870’s were especially compelling. Though the story could have easily been a Sassy-Teen-Learns-Her-Lesson-and-Becomes-Nicer, Park went beyond stereotypes to make her characters nicely flawed and realistic. I enjoyed this first venture into Aussie August a lot. ( )

The poignancy of this wonderful novel has stayed with me since I first read it in my early teens, and I felt the need to revisit it now that my naivete and hope has all but abandoned me. ( )

The story is about an unhappy and lonely girl who was transported back to 1800s New South Wales, and returned changed person.

One of my favourite children's books! I never get bored reading it over again. ( )

The best book of it's kind (time travel, YA, historical fiction) that I've read since Tuck Everlasting! Wonderful!!!! ( )