Summer book/'Tanglewreck'

Sometimes a good first line just opens the door a crack. Tanglewreck, Jeanette Winterson's first novel for kids, begins this way: “At six forty-five one summer morning, a red London bus was crossing Waterloo Bridge.”

 It isn’t until you read on a little more that you get to these lines: “The bus and its passengers were never found. It was the first of the Time Tornadoes.” What we soon discover is that time is behaving very strangely in London – it’s slowing to a standstill and then speeding up crazily.

 The Time Tornadoes (and disappearances) are happening with increasing frequency and intensity. Plus, a wooly mammoth, long thought extinct, is seen near the River Thames. What — or who — is behind these unusual occurrences? Eleven-year-old Silver, whose parents and sister disappeared a few years before, lives with her cruel guardian, Mrs. Rokabye, in an ancient, sprawling mansion called Tanglewreck (which holds powers and secrets of its own).

 Silver discovers that an ancient and mysterious clock, The Timekeeper, is somehow at the heart of the time distortions. Whoever controls the clock, controls time itself. To her peril, Silver realizes that two evil adults — Abel Drinkwater and Regalia Mason — are both desperate to find the Timekeeper for reprehensible reasons of their own.

 Along with her new friend Gabriel, whose father had a long ago connection to The Timekeeper, Silver faces terrible dangers and difficult choices. Fans of some of the classics, old and new, of children’s fantasy (like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials) will enjoy this as well.