Chil­dren’s

Mira’s Diary: Bombs Over London

  • Review
By – June 15, 2015

Mira is off again on the trail to find and help her time-trav­el­ing moth­er amidst the threat of bombs and the espi­onage of WWI. Mira is just devel­op­ing her own time-trav­el­ing skills and has trav­eled back to Lon­don in 1917. She is to assist her moth­er in pass­ing on valu­able infor­ma­tion to Room 40, the secret code-break­ing cen­ter of the British Gov­ern­ment. This is an enor­mous task, giv­en that she can’t talk to or meet with her moth­er while time-trav­el­ing and the ever-present Watch­er is there to make cer­tain his­to­ry is not changed. Mira meets peo­ple who will them­selves change his­to­ry: H.G. Wells, Emme­line Pankhurst, Beat­rix Pot­ter, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mira must fight her own desire to tell them what she knows to be true in the future and the impact of their accom­plish­ments. She must remain under­cov­er and not reveal her time-trav­el­ing abil­i­ty, unless per­haps one of these famous peo­ple is also a time-traveler. 

It does not hurt to have Mal­colm, a very techie broth­er, who sup­plies end­less streams of inter­net infor­ma­tion, a mys­te­ri­ous Mor­ton who appears out of nowhere, and a father who under­stands that both his wife and daugh­ter are time-trav­el­ers on a mis­sion to keep their fam­i­ly safe from the Hor­ri­ble Thing in the future. 

Through­out we are aware that Mira’s trav­els bring her face-to-face with past world events that will impact the future and the Jew­ish peo­ple. Her con­cern and actions show that she under­stands the con­cepts of Tikkun Olam and social jus­tice and that she advo­cates for rea­soned thinking. 

The Mira’s Diary series, three to date, are excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties to intro­duce world events, his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters, sci­en­tif­ic inven­tions and log­i­cal think­ing to young read­ers. The merg­ing of tech­nol­o­gy, maps and geogra­phy, human events and log­i­cal think­ing make these diaries ter­rif­ic read­ing for ele­men­tary and mid­dle school read­ers. Edu­ca­tors will find it easy to open the door to dis­cus­sions on WWI, Lon­don, spies, and the suf­fragette and human rights move­ments and will val­ue the list of resources pro­vid­ed by Moss.

Chris­tine Maas­dam holds a Mas­ters in Human­i­ties, cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in Muse­um Stud­ies and Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ty Pro­tec­tion. She is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing her M.L.I.S. Her inter­ests are phi­los­o­phy and the impact of art and tech­nol­o­gy on culture.

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