Linda Kempton

Quite a good historical fiction book about the Black Plague for young readers. It uses the timeslip device to place a late 20th century boy into the 17th century: he turns the knob on an antique cradle (thanks to Mary Norton for the mechanism!) His interactions with the girl who is his counterpart in the past are pretty much all variations on the same theme. She thinks at various stages that he is a ghost, a demon, or an angel. He thinks that she is very superstitious. This may be how two young English people from those times would react, but in the short timespan of the story it never really transcends the initial "supernatural! am not! are so!"

A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh is another book about the Plague, set in the same village, which really enters the mind of the young woman who is the protagonist. It gives a haunting feeling of the experience of life in plague-isolated Eyam. I'd recommend it as a first choice, but Naming of William Rutherford would adequately fill the same curriculum slot.… (mais)