City of Ruins: Danger Boy Episode 4 - Hardcover

Williams, Mark London

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763628719 ISBN 13: 9780763628710

Publisher: Candlewick, 2007

Synopsis

Danger Boy is back! With the deadly slow pox spreading, the time-traveling trio hurtle back to Jerusalem circa 583 BCE.

After another close call, the good news is that Eli Sands, aka Danger Boy, is back in San Francisco in 2020. The bad news is that Eli and his friends, Clyne the evolved dinosaur and Thea the Alexandrian scholar, are being held captive by the government agency DARPA. Since their last foray into the Fifth Dimension, it seems history has been unraveling everywhere, and the deadly slow pox virus is spreading fast. DARPA's plan is for Eli to visit ancient Jerusalem. But Eli and crew discover that the city is in ruins from a Babylonian invasion, and soon an angry mob is ready to stone them. Will Danger Boy and his friends find their way home again?

About this title

About the Author

Mark London Williams is the author of plays, comics, and the four Danger Boy books. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5–8—In this fourth story in the series, Eli, 13, called a "chronological asset" by the secret government agency that has hijacked him, must time travel from his present, the year 2020, back to Jerusalem in 583 B.C.E. to try to find a cure for the present-day plague called the slow pox, or Chronological Displacement Syndrome, that may or may not have been bioengineered as a weapon. His first-person narrative alternates with those of his companions, Clyne, an intelligent dinosaur from another planet, and Thea, 14, the daughter of Hypatia of ancient Alexandria. They communicate with each other and with the natives they meet with the help of a lingo-spot, an instantaneous translator. Major plot elements from the first three books are introduced for background, including time travel to Alexandria and San Francisco during World War II to meet people like King Arthur and Merlin, Lewis and Clark, Thomas Jefferson, and Nazis. Revisiting the themes of the previous volumes and setting up the major and minor characters with their own stories and time shifts create an environment of chronological multitasking. Readers accustomed to IMing while talking on the phone and doing homework will revel in this fractured time line, as well as in Eli's ruminations on relativity, unintended consequences of technology, and quantum flux.—Ann Robinson, Moultonborough Academy Library, NH
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Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0763628719
• ISBN 13: 9780763628710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288