Time Villains (Time Villains, 1) - Hardcover

Piñeiro, Victor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1728230497 ISBN 13: 9781728230498

Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers, 2021

Synopsis

★ "Magnificent."―Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

Story Thieves meets Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library in this wacky, hilarious, and fast-paced middle-grade series starter, with the perfect combination of magic, imagination, and adventure.

Javi Santiago is trying his best not to fail sixth grade. So, when the annual "invite any three people to dinner" homework assignment rolls around, Javi enlists his best friend, Wiki, and his sister, Brady, to help him knock it out of the park.

But the dinner party is a lot more than they bargained for. The family's mysterious antique table actually brings the historical guests to the meal…and Blackbeard the Pirate is turning out to be the worst guest of all time.

Before they can say "avast, ye maties," Blackbeard escapes, determined to summon his bloodthirsty pirate crew. And as Javi, Wiki, and Brady try to figure out how to get Blackbeard back into his own time, they might have to invite some even zanier figures to set things right again…

Praise for Time Villains:

"Piñeiro scores with this tale of friendship, magic, and adventure... Magnificent."―Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

"It's got heart, it's got thrills, it's got pirates! You won't be able to put down this action-packed, relentlessly funny adventure."―Sarah Mlynowski, author of the New York Times bestselling Whatever After series

"A magical table that pulls in famous people from history and fiction? Is this the greatest idea for a book ever? Yes. Yes it is. Come join the best dinner party in history (and books), full of pirates, sandwiches and history's greatest figures!"―James Riley, New York Times bestselling author of The Story Thieves series

About this title

About the Author

Victor Piñeiro has led digital innovation at HBO Max, run social media for @YouTube and launched @Skittles. He's also designed games for Hasbro, written and produced an award-winning documentary on virtual worlds, and taught third graders. He is the author of Time Villains and Monster Problems.

Reviews

Gr 4–6—Puerto Rican siblings Javi and Brady along with their friend Wiki have discovered a purring table. Well, it does more than purr. Andy, as they nickname him, can bring people from the past for a dinner party. Super cool for a school assignment that asks which three people would you invite from history for a dinner party. Not so cool when one of the guests you invite is Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard the Pirate, and he escapes into your world. Now Javi, Brady, and Wiki aren't sleeping and aren't concentrating at school (by the way, what is up with the ancient castle they go to school in and the teachers who seem a little too much like some people they have read about?) because they are worried they are going to be killed by Blackbeard if they don't use Andy to bring his crew to this world. It appears that all is lost, but when past fabled and famous people join together and combine with stories from Wiki's Haitian family, defeat is impossible. The informal writing style and vocabulary try to capture the narrative voice of tween Javi, but the writing ends up being stilted and sometimes the plot feels awkward, with abrupt ends of events or giving readers déjà vu by repeating certain circumstances. This book combines the many myths of Edward Teach and the glorified stereotype of pirates in an attempt to create an engaging tale, but the humor falls flat. A short appendix includes accurate historical or literary biographies of each of the people encountered in the novel yet the portrayals of a number of them in the actual story contradict the facts given for them. The concept of having historical and literary figures visiting the modern world might strike the funny bone of some readers, but the inconsistent way they are incorporated into the modern world takes some of the fun out. VERDICT Though this has great potential as a story and is a wonderful concept, the execution of the plot and the portrayal of the characters does not recommend it for purchase.—Clare A. Dombrowski, Amesbury P.L., MA

Edition details

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1728230497
• ISBN 13: 9781728230498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336