The hero returns to Bloor's Academy in Charlie Bone and the Time Twister: Children of the Red King Book 2 by Jenny Nimmo. When Charlie's young ancestor Henry Yewbeam accidentally travels through time from 1916 to the present, he needs Charlie's help to hide from his cousin Ezekiel Bloor and the scheming Yewbeam aunts. Can Charlie get Henry back home again? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Gr. 5-7. In the second volume of a planned five, young Charlie discovers new dimensions to his magical talents while helping an age-mate who drops from thin air at wizardly Bloor Academy (and turns out to be a long-lost great-granduncle) escape the clutches of the Red King's less savory descendants. Like the first installment, this stays solidly in the Harry Potter slipstream--there's even a hidden chamber and a miraculous bird flying to the rescue. But it has some ingenious features of its own, including a cafe that admits only customers with pets, and such oddball magics as one character's involuntary ability to make every nearby light bulb explode. Nimmo's world is also darker than Rowling's (so far, at least), with the line between good guys and bad not as well defined. Still, Potterphiles, and many Snicketteers too, will find the territory comfortably familiar. --John Peters Copyright 2003 Booklist

Gr 4-7-In this sequel to Midnight for Charlie Bone (Scholastic, 2003), Nimmo continues the saga of the endowed descendants of the Red King, who attend a very Hogwarts-like boarding school called Bloor's Academy. "The Time Twister," a marblelike ball with the power to transport people through time, brings Henry Yewbeam from 1916 to present day Bloor's. His evil, scheming cousin Ezekiel, who was responsible for sending him to the future, is still alive, and Charlie Bone must protect Henry and find a way to send him back into the past. This is a breezy read, even at its 400-page length. Sadly, there are plot elements that seem to come totally out of the blue or that just don't make sense. The power with which each individual child is endowed, such as the ability to create storms or to transform into a bird, seems arbitrarily created to provide dramatic rescues. A painting of a wizard named Skarpo is left for Charlie by one of his aunts. As readers of the first book know, Charlie can hear voices in pictures, and they now discover that he can actually enter them as well. Oddly, Henry seems unfazed by his trip through time and by the modern world. The unexpected plot twist at the end is strangely unclimactic, and seems to pass by so quickly that any sense of triumph at the outcome is lost. Charlie Bone is a likable character to whom kids will turn to for a fix after they've finished the latest Harry Potter for the fifth time. For libraries where fantasy is popular.-Tim Wadham, Maricopa County Library District, Phoenix, AZ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.