Edge of Yesterday

Edge of Yesterday by Robin Stevens Payes focuses on Carlotta "Charley" Morton, a brainy 13-year-old girl who is obsessed with Leonardo da Vinci. Following a museum trip in D.C. to see the Leonardo da Vinci Codex exhibit, among other things, Charley has a strange experience. She gets hit in the head by a football outside of the museum, then on the subway ride home, with her dad and her science fair partner, Billy Vincenzo, she dozes off to find herself seemingly observing da Vinci himself, sketching in his studio in the Florence, Italy of 500 years ago. When her dad shakes her awake, it's all gone, just like that, but she decides then and there to focus on time travel for her science fair project, despite Billy's desire to cover flight and the Wright Brothers.

The next day, when she goes with her dad to his government office during Take Your Child To Work Day, something even stranger happens - while using her dad's computer to do some research, a strange and handsome young man calling himself Kairos appears in the room, remotely takes over the computer, and shows her some amazing things regarding da Vinci, the Earth, and time. He even leaves her with some intriguing items, including a golden compass that looks much like one she happened to find after her earlier da Vinci vision on the bus. With Billy's hyper intelligence and knowledge of quantum physics, and the goodies left by Kairos, she just might be able to make her time machine model, based on da Vinci's early sketches, and go back and visit the man himself.

Unfortunately, her former best friend Beth, now head over heels for the school's jock, Lex, is throwing a kink in the works by wanting all of them to work on science fair stuff together. What's worse, for Beth anyway, it seems like Lex might be into Charley, although Billy has been crushing on her for a long time, even if Charley is too blind to see it. How is a genius supposed to build a time machine in her garage with her nerd buddy when the hot guy comes knocking on the garage door? Charley will have to figure it out and fast if she is going to finish her project for the science fair, with her friendships intact.

Edge of Yesterday is a quick read at only 100 pages (plus two bonus chapters from the second book for an additional 25 or so pages), and it is clearly directed at the Young Adult crowd, but I am not so sure it would be super appealing to them. I've read a number of YA titles and while Edge of Yesterday is not a terrible book, I am not sure young teens would use terms like "loosey goosey" and "grand poobah," but I could be totally wrong. For me, it just didn't seem too believable. Payes also uses a lot of Italian and Latin phrases in the book, and while some are translated, not all are, so you are left to figure out what wasn't translated. I did okay because I took Latin in college, but that's not everyone. Stranger yet, she tends to expound on some of the more unusual words she uses as Charley, using parenthesis to define them and give examples. It just seemed odd to me to over-explain words that kids may or may not be familiar with, while ignoring foreign language phrases.

The end of Edge of Yesterday leaves Charley in a peculiar place and it will be interesting to see where it goes.