Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Adventures in the Middle Ages
Illustrator: Bill Slavin
Fiction Series
For ages 8 to 10
Kids Can Press, 2000 ISBN: 978-1550745382
Josh and Emma are back at the Good Times Travel Agency and Josh is eager to go back in time once again so that he can become a knight. Willing to help out the boy, the peculiar owner of the travel agency, Mr. T. Pettigrew, gets down a book about the middle ages. Emma, Josh’s big sister, is not too keen on this idea. She remembers all too well the last time they took an Agency trip, and that time she, Josh, and their little sister Libby were almost killed in ancient Egypt. Before she can stop him, Josh takes the Middle Ages guidebook from Mr. T. Pettigrew and in a flash the three children are back in the middle ages.
To Josh’s disgust they do not find themselves in a castle full of knights. Instead, they are in the middle of a field and the people around them are peasants, the lowest of the low in Medieval society. The three children soon discover how unpleasant it was to be a peasant. The food is terrible, the work is hard, they have to share a bed with others, and the beds are full of vermin. Somehow Josh, Emma and Libby have to get into a castle, and somehow Josh has to find a way to get the opportunity to be a knight.
With clever touches of humor, the author of this fast-paced book tells an absorbing story, and at the same time she provides the reader with a great deal of information about what it must have been like to live in the Middle Ages. The reader will learn about what people ate, what it took to become a knight, what castles in this time looked like, what people believed, and much more.
This is one of the books in the fascinating Good Times Travel Agency series.
