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When Ryan and Kelley find themselves teamed together for a school science project in Time Travel Trap, both fifth-graders think it's the end of the world. Ryan is too busy building his "living dinosaur village" to waste much time on school, and he hates the idea of visiting a university fossil dig in the afternoons when school lets out. He also hates the idea of dead fossils - he wants to dream of living dinosaurs instead.
Kelley's father is a computer science whiz at the university, and Kelley wants to follow in his footsteps, especially after her artistic mother left and her father and her brother Drew are all she has left. In the fifth grade, Kelley is already worried about getting good enough grades to get into MIT. She's terrified that working with Ryan will bring down her grade.
But when they get to the fossil dig site, both Ryan and Kelley are surprised to find the university students disturbed. Someone has been moving around the students' grids - covering up old grids and opening new ones. Kelley works hard sketching the fossils that have been found, although she pooh-poohs Ryan's praise for her artwork, because she wants only to be a scientist. And when the kids return, they discover that the site is being closed to all outsiders, including the fifth-graders unless they come with teacher supervision.
Kelley is horrified to think that she won't be able to get a perfect grade on her project, but Ryan is more curious about what's happening at the site - because he overheard a conversation that seemed to come from the rocky ridge that overlooks the site - that sounded like two kids trying to "fix" something.
Suspicious, Ryan convinces Kelley to meet him that night so they can bike over to the site and inspect the ridge after the university students have left. Desperate to save her grade, Kelley agrees. What they find delights Ryan and first terrifies Kelley, but then gives her an idea.
I've always loved dinosaurs. I'm also writing about fossil hunters and dinosaur bones in Dinosaur Hunter, a historical story about the Dinosaur Bone Wars in nineteenth-century Wyoming, but there's something aboue the idea of living dinosaurs that has captivated me just the way it excites Ryan - the eternal question of What if? What if dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct?
Click here to read an excerpt from Time Travel Trap.
Time Travel Trap is available as a download and a Kindle book from Amazon.com
It is also available as an e-book from The Fiction Works,
and will be available as a paperback soon.
Click here to visit The Fiction Works.
