Book Review of West's Time Machine, A Novel for Youth.

Foreword Magazine called it, "a fascinating adventure through time." West's Time Machine is an exhilarating novel that is jam packed with 187 pages of never-ending action. For those who love the thrill of time travel and those who love Einstein, this book combines the two to create the adventure of a lifetime.

A year after the tragic car accident that killed West and Gina's parents, the kids come across some old boxes in a shed. The boxes belonged to their parents and to their amazement, one of them contained the parts of a 1955 Harley Davidson. West felt that his parents would love to have put that old bike together, so as a tribute to them, he and his baby sister begin to piece together the motorcycle until they at last finish it in all its glory.

The old shed that contained the box of motorcycle parts also held many other boxes with the bold white letters ‘Property of NASA,' written across them. The kids catch sight of these and asked their grandmother about them. As it turns out, their father bought them long ago at a NASA auction and thought he could build something useful from all the parts. West and Gina decide to search through the boxes to see what fun treasures they might find. They find a mysterious brown folder marked TOP SECRET. They opened the folder and found the plans for building an actual time machine. They quickly set upon themselves to build this machine from the parts in the boxes. Once built, they attached it to the side of the motorcycle.

When trying out the motorcycle, they accidently activate the time travel box, which transports them back in time to the August 5th, 1948. Here they meet Albert Einstein. He becomes fascinated by the motorcycle and takes it for a joy ride. West and Gina jump on behind him and shoot through time until they find themselves safely back at home in 2008.

The two kids teach Albert Einstein about the many technological marvels of today, like laptop computers and on-line chatting plus much more. When West's teacher takes a small break to have her baby, Einstein gets the chance to take over. Albert takes the time machine box off the motorcycle and brings it to class with him in hopes of learning more about it. When Albert isn't paying attention, one of the students begin messing with the time machine and in avertedly ends up sending the entire classroom and its contents into the past to 1875. The students are taken aback at first, but then decide that they should take this opportunity to look around a bit at their surroundings.

West encounters Billy The Kid in a jail cell window and gets talked into reaching in the adjacent window to grab the jail keys off the desk. He hands them to Billy, not wanting to leave a kid behind bars. After some interesting interactions with the local towns folk, Einstein leads them back to their classroom and turns on the time machine taking them all back to the present. This causes the students to go home, raving about the great Mr. Albert and how he caused them to become more interested in science and history. The school principal is so taken aback that he offers Mr. Albert the chance to teach West's classroom for the rest of the week.


Gina and West beg Albert to help them rescue their parents who died in a devastating car crash one year earlier. When Albert is certain that he has learned how to control the time machine, all three of them get on the motorcycle and begin traveling through time. Suddenly West and Gina's argument breaks out into a hitting and kicking fight while on the bike. They accidentally hit some of the time machine controls, sending them not to the past, but sprawling forward into the future! More than 2300 years into the future, where they find the last city left on Earth, Atlantis. The three of them get shrunk down to size of raisins so that they can enter the miniature city of Atlantis, where they find the only food sources are insects and fungus. Trying to save the people of Atlantis, they strap the time machine box to both the motorcycle and the tiny city in an attempt to bring them back to the year 2007, when food and life on Earth is plentiful and their parents were alive. When they arrived, they had only minutes to prevent their parent's car accident. The people of Atlantis offered to pay back his kindness by helping to save his parents.

It is a captivating book with adventure around every corner. They travel through time not once, but many times, encountering many oddities and wonders that stimulate the creativity and imagination of the reader. This is a must have for any library. This novel can be found at any on-line bookstore like Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.

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Please have a look at novels West's Time Machine, and George's Pond.

West's Time Machine Novel:
http://www.amazon.com/Wests-Time-Machine-Scott-Waring/dp/0595418872

George's Pond Novel:
www.amazon.com/Georges-Pond-Created-Tradition-Charlottes/dp/0595421350

Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_799510_32.html

A Book Review: Great Resource for Group Facilitation

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Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_2104_22.html