Moonboy by Anna Ciddor

Title: Moonboy

Author: Anna Ciddor

Genre: Historical Fiction/Timeslip

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 4^th March 2025

Format: Paperbacks

Pages: 288

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: An exciting timeslip novel from the bestselling author of The Boy Who Stepped Through Time, featuring a present-day girl hurtling back to the time of the 1969 moon landing.

When a boy called Keith pops up from nowhere in Letty’s bedroom and accuses her of invading his room, Letty is astonished – but things get even stranger when she realises she is caught up in an incredible adventure, able to slip back and forth in time!

Keith lives in the world of 1969, and Letty joins in the thrill and excitement of the first astronauts about to land on the moon.

But when she discovers her trips to the past are changing history, she starts to worry. What if something she says or does causes a disaster – or even messes up the moon landing?

~*~

Society has always been fascinated by the moon and the moon landing of 1969, and for those that witnessed it, it was spectacular. Letty is staying with her grandmother whilst her parents are away for work, and visits her grandad – Keith – every day. But things really get interesting when she finds his box of treasures in her bedroom – and she starts travelling back in time to 1969, in the days leading up to the moon landing. In 1969, Keith lives in a world gripped by the upcoming moon landing, but nobody more so than Keith, who goes by Moonboy. He’s shocked to meet Letty, who gets caught up in seeing the moon landing in real time, not just from old videos, but soon, she starts mentioning things that change the past for his family. But will she inadvertently change things for the moon landing as well?

Moonboy is another fantastic time slip novel from Anna Ciddor, this time taking us to 1969 and modern history, but an event that doesn’t often appear unless it’s been a character talking about it. And it’s often not explored from the Australia perspective, and Australia’s involvement in broadcasting the moon landing from Honeysuckle Creek. In fact, I have only ever seen it in one other book – in The Ghost by the Billabong by Jackie French, book five in the Matilda Saga. And that’s what makes this book interesting. Experiencing the moon landing through the eyes of two children, who are fifty years apart but in the same space at times. It’s about the wonder of seeing it, and what it meant for the people at Honeysuckle Creek to be part of something so important.

As with any time travel adventure, the time traveller has to be careful not to change the past too much. But Letty is determined to make sure things happen as they are supposed to, and to spend time with her grandfather, who has dementia. At the start of the novel, she hates going to the care facility he is in. She longs to be home, and she’s grappling with fractured friendships and her own identity. Where she fits in with everything, because she doesn’t see herself as the little girl she used to be. She’s finds out a lot more about herself during her time in 1969 and when she gets to know Elizabeth, who also has a relative at the same place Letty’s grandfather is in. It’s these relationships that make the novel shine, that show Letty who she really is and what it means when people accept you for who you are without judgement. Not just because you do the same things as them.

The moments of conflict throughout the book are varied but give the story the pacing and tensity it needs – nothing too dramatic, but enough to keep readers going, to find out if anything does change and how Letty gets through to her grandfather in 2025. It shows that sometimes, finding out what we really like is what can create meaningful connections with the people around us, and reaching back into the past can make this happen in unexpected ways. Anna Ciddor’s story explores history and family in delicate and emotional ways in this book, getting to the heart of Letty’s relationship with her grandfather, what he means to her and what knowing her in the past meant to him as well. The poignancy of this is on equal footing with 1969 Keith’s wonderful use of old Australian sayings and adages that give this book its unique Australian flavour. In doing so, the culture and language used by some of the characters comes to life alongside Australia’s contribution to one of the biggest events of the twentieth century.