Charlotte Sometimes

by Penelope Farmer

Book Overview

Charlotte finds it hard to sleep her first night at boarding school. When she wakes to see a large tree looming outside her window, she wonders if she's still dreaming. Surely the tree wasn't there... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440412617
• ISBN13: 9780440412618
• Release Date: February 1992
• Publisher: Yearling Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Warning: Review by Ellie Reasoner contains a major spoiler!

Although it is very interesting and well-written, do not read her review, unless you do not mind finding out major aspects about the book's ending.

A review of the book "Charlotte Sometimes"

This is a superbly written children's book from the late 1960s and republished in the 1990s. There is plenty of mystery and you never quite work out why Charlotte is mysteriously transposed in time back to the first world war until the last few pages. I think it's one for slightly older children, perhaps around 10-13, as there are many elements in it around the history of the 1914-18 war which the imaginative teacher could include in class lessons. It's a great read and I found it difficult to put down, coming back to it fresh after last reading it in my own childhood.

Charlotte Always

I actually read this book when I was a young teen and I have to admit I was only reading it because there was nothing else to read in the house and the telly was on the blink. I absolutely loved it from beginning to end. This is a time-travel story with a bit of a twist. Charlotte Makepeace is a new girl at an old boarding school. On her first night she goes to sleep in her bed and in the morning she wakes up as Clare Moby, a schoolgirl from over forty years ago. Of course Charlotte is confused, even more so when people don't realise that she is not Clare, not even Clare's younger sister Emily. Somehow she struggles through her first day as Clare but to add to her confusion she finds herself back in her own time the following day and no one has missed her! Charlotte soon realises that Clare is taking her place in her time and she is taking Clare's. The two girls muddle through by communicating through Clare's diary, leaving each other notes and messages in order for them to survive in their swap-over worlds. However it's not long before Clare's younger sister Emily realises that something is wrong and Charlotte is forced to tell her the truth. With Emily as an ally, Charlotte's time in the past is a little easier but there is a dark cloud on the horizon. Clare and Emily are going into lodgings outside the school and the children have worked out that the time travelling that they are experiencing has something to do with the bed they sleep in and the tree outside the window which exists only in Clare's time. This is an exciting story that moves at a fair pace, even more so when Charlotte is trapped in the past, forced to become a day pupil and temporarily forfeit her real life in the future. Charlotte's identity is soon in question even to herself. Is she Charlotte or is she in fact Clare? Only Emily constant nagging about trying to get the real Clare back keeps the young girl aware of whom she really is. Charlotte experiences life in England during the First World War. What once was history for her becomes the present, and she suffers with her new friends, as they loose loved ones to foreign battlefields, and face the terror of air raids in the middle of the night. Charlotte's eventual permanent return to the future is not without its own problems but luckily Clare had her own ally in the form of Elizabeth, a dorm mate who like Emily realised that Clare was not Charlotte and helped her as best she could. Charlotte's return to the future is not with out a tragic price. Clare, Charlotte finds out died not long after her return to the past, from flu and for a while Charlotte is grief stricken. However redemption comes in the form of a parcel of memories from a now grown up Emily who has waited many years to contact her sister's fellow time traveller in the future. "Charlotte Sometimes" is a surprisingly dark children's novel with flashes of colour and inspiration as two young girls live lives that are not their own. It is

A book you can read year after year

I read this book years ago, but it still stays in the forefront of my mind. Recently its been stronger than ever thanks to a friend of mine who loves The Cure. Charlotte goes back and forth through time. living her life, and someone elses. She's only Charlotte sometimes, as the title dictates. The story is eerie, but fascinating, Charlotte makes friend with her 'sister" who is not her sister, but the sister of the girl whose life she sometimes lives. She has to keep this fact a secret, and the plot gets deeper and deeper. The end of the book shocked me with the emotion I felt, especially the revelations that comes at the end. It's sad, bittersweet and lovely all at once, this is the kind of book I would keep forever.

IDENTITY CRISIS: CHARLOTTE ALWAYS?

This book has remained one of my favorite YA novels which I discovered as an adult, after the explosion of YA literature in the 60's (too late for my childhood!) Now any Time Travel book involves careful detailing by the author in advance, to establish the Laws of time travel and avoid anachronisms. How is the protagonist transported back and then forward again in time? (In this case the vehicle is a bed in a girls' dorm.) Must she go back far enough in time to preceed her own birth or can she witness herself at a younger age? Is she allowed to interact with her own ancestors or try to change national or even family history? Can she actually change places with a real person from the Past or merely fit in as an unknown entity in another age? What happens to the person from the Past who is suddenly placed in a modern settting? Won't people in the Past and the Present realize that they are dealing with imposters? Do they look and sound that much alike? Heavy problems to resolve, but Penelope Farmer handles them all with grace and skill, leaving hardly any loose threads. Her heroine, Charlotte, attends a boarding school where she is pleased but puzzled to be taken under the wing of a kindly older girl--whose mother had asked her to be a special friend to Charlotte, if she ever met her. All throughout the story we keep wondering which of the girls she meets in the Past will turn out to be this sympathetic mother. Charlotte is trapped on an endless temporal seesaw, never knowing in which Time (40 years' difference) she will awaken. She and her alter-ego, Clare, are doomed to never meet face to face, yet they each learn much about the other. I admired their ingenuity in keeping a mutual journal and hiding notes in the hollowed bedpost. But why does Charlotte allow the girls in the Past to accept her as Clare; she does not protest that they mistake her for someone else. She lets the girls of the Past claim her as their own, which gradually erases her true, contemporary persona. Is she so diss! atisfied with herself and her life that she is willing to become someone else? Will she be destined to remain forever in the Past as Clare? Does she lack the will and desire to preserve her true identity? Will she ever become Charlotte Always? A Fabulous tale which will enthrall and mystify the reader!