The MudPuddlers by Pamela Rushby

Title: The MudPuddlers

Author: Pamela Rushby

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 5^th April 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: What lies hidden in the mud? What might happen if you look at it too long? And what will happen if you let it go?

Twelve-year-old Nina is not happy. Her scientist parents are spending a year in Antarctica. And Nina’s being sent to London to stay with her Aunt Bee, an intertidal archaeologist, who lives on a converted barge on the Thames. She’s also a keen mud larker, combing the river mud for fascinating, long-forgotten articles from past lives. Nina arrives with an Attitude. Her parents have never left her behind before. It takes time for her to settle in, helped by the MudPuddlers, a local group of enthusiastic amateur mud larks, and especially by Molly, an elderly MudPuddler living on a nearby barge. Molly draws Nina into the magic and mystery of the ancient river and its treasures. When she finds herself stranded in time, in the Blitz in 1940, Nina and a very unwilling fellow traveller, Tom, become runaways, fumbling their way across wartime England, desperate to return to London. Will they ever see their families again?

~*~

Nina has always moved around the world with her parents, doing school online through an international school. But ow, she’s being sent to live with her Aunt Bee on a barge in London while her scientist parents head off to Antarctica for a year. But Nina is not impressed, and she doesn’t want to go – she wants to stay with her parents. But things are going ahead and not changing, so Nina is shipped off to England unhappily – perhaps in a similar way to the evacuees from London, who were sent to the countryside during World War II during the Blitz. Soon, Nina is caught up in the world of mudlarking and a group called the MudPuddlers, who spend their weekends exploring areas of the Thames at low tide to find historical treasures. One of the Mud Puddlers is Nina’s elderly neighbour, Molly, who shows Nina the magic and mystery of the river – and what can happen if you see shadows of the past. Nina finds out she can travel back in time when she’s grasping pieces she finds in the river – to Tudor times, to Victorian times, to the Suffragette rallies, and to London during the Blitz. It is her trip to the Blitz that strands her – she forgot the rules Molly told her to follow when travelling in time – most importantly – to observe, and not get involved. But Nina is stuck, and she finds that she’s stuck with Tom, an evacuee. They are determined to get back to London – Tom wants to be a Fire Watcher, and Nina wants to get back to her own time. But they need to find a way back to London first – and will Nina ever get home, or will she be trapped in the past forever?

I like novels set in World War II, and I like time slip or time travel novels – and The MudPuddlers combines both of these. Each time travel book I have read has used something different as a portal into the past – an item linked to the past, a stone, even a corner, and several other clever ways to travel. The story focuses on Nina, because she needs to adjust to a new life filled with a bit of uncertainty – which I think mirrored the uncertainty of the evacuees in World War II in a clever way – neither Nina nor Tom is happy with their respective circumstances when they’re sent away from their families.  They have both had their choice taken away from them – in very different circumstances and times, though. What I liked about this one was that Nina had the foresight to avoid letting people know she was from a different time, even though people noticed when she froze in her own time, and disappeared in the past, which added a sense of mystery to it. Another thing I liked was that time passed differently – it always seems to in portal stories, whether the characters head into a fantasy world or the past. Something within the travel aspect means that time in the fantasy world or past seems to move faster than in the present of the characters who are travelling. I suppose this works the way it does so that the contemporary characters can slip back into their lives without scaring those in their time – which makes sense to me, and I do like the way this works. It means that Nina can slip in and out of time easily, without anyone knowing –and where the mystery comes in is when she is trapped in the past – 1940 – for days. She’s not sure how this will affect things, nor how interacting with people like Tom will affect things – because she can’t change the past – one of the rules of time travel is that time travellers (in all time travel books) can’t alter the past too much in case it affects the future.

The story is fast-paced, and keeps things moving in a way that is exciting and makes sure that the characters are on the go – as the main adventure happens in the second half, because the first half has to establish the setting and how everything works for Nina, as well as her conflicts with her family and the online school friends that she has, and this is what drives her motivations throughout the novel in many different ways. I really felt for Nina – I wanted her to be happy, but could also understand why she was upset – such a big change, and being away from her parents at such a crossroads time of her childhood will speak to may middle grade or early young adult readers, because like them, Nina is navigating big changes in her life at a time when she doesn’t really want things toc change – when she feels like she needs the security of being with everything she knows. Yet it is these changes that will teach Nina to explore the world and let her grow in ways that she never thought possible. This is another brilliant book from Pamela Rushby – the last three books she has written have been wonderful historical fiction books and I love this genre, whatever age group it is aimed at because I learn something different from each one.

Another wonderful book!