Bring Back Yesterday

Lisa's life changes drastically after her parents die in a plane crash and she is forced to live with her Aunt Alice and cope with her new situation the only way she knows how, by rejoining her imaginary friend, Rooji, on fantastical, time-traveling adventures.

Grade 5-8?Lisa's world is turned upside down when her parents are killed in a plane crash caused by a terrorist bomb. On a trip to England for a memorial service, she finds herself transported back to Shakespeare's time where she meets a girl her own age named Rooji, the same name as her imaginary childhood friend. Back in New York, she moves in with her Aunt Alice, a veterinarian, who is not used to having an adolescent around. Lisa finds it a difficult adjustment, and retreats into Rooji's time. Then Alice takes on organizing a demonstration for improved airline security when Lisa would prefer not to call any attention to herself or the tragedy. Through this effort, Lisa meets Brian, whose brother was killed on the same plane. This friendship and Alice's arrest and trial after the demonstration help Lisa come to understand her aunt better and to accept her new life. She then chooses to stop going back in time. The story of Lisa's adjustment to loss and change is well done. Readers will experience her moods and feelings, and her struggle to keep going while screaming inside. However, the time-fantasy element detracts from rather than enhances the story. It somewhat parallels Lisa's own life, but none of the people really come alive. The shifts in time interrupt the flow of the plot. Still, readers will enjoy this story of Lisa's struggles to come to terms with tragic loss.?Jane Gardner Connor, South Carolina State Library, Columbia
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Time travel and issues of airline safety mix with the themes of friendship and bereavement in this eclectic novel. When Lisa's parents are killed in a Lockerbie-like plane disaster, one of the many changes in Lisa's life is the reappearance after many years of her imaginary childhood friend, Rooji. Rooji, amorphous in identity, takes the guise of a struggling actor in Elizabethan England, a time and place which Lisa is studying in school and to which she is mentally transported during periods of tension and pressure. Sirof (Because She's My Friend) skillfully parallels Lisa's escapist adventures with the events in her real life, allowing her a setting in which she can safely overcome some of her fears as well as uncap the long-unexpressed pain over her parents' deaths. As Lisa slowly heals, Rooji disappears and the time travel stops. But the lessons she learns?forgiveness of her guardian, an aunt whose advocacy of airline safety often goes to the extreme; the acceptance of genuine overtures of friendship; and the ability to grieve openly for her parents?linger on. Given the recent tragedy of TWA Flight #800, this novel is likely to attract unusual interest. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 6^-9. Thirteen-year-old Lisa's well-ordered life is shattered when her parents are killed in an airplane crash, and she bitterly resents living with her aunt Alice, who has focused her own grief on a campaign to increase airline safety. Lisa retreats to the past, and after mysteriously reuniting with her imaginary childhood friend Rooji, is transported to Elizabethan England where she and Rooji become apprentices at a theater. When Alice is arrested at a protest, and the playwright Master Bowen is accused of violating censorship rules, events in both times take on eerie parallels. As Lisa struggles in two worlds, she makes peace with Alice and realizes she can and must get past the crippling inertia of grief. Elizabethan London comes alive here, and the book's fast pace is an intriguing counterpoint to Lisa's suffocating, real-world life. Chris Sherman