Street of Dreams by Norma Hansburg (Young Adult, 9/10E, short 'n' sweet review)

It's an 1980s style cover!

  February 2015, Inkwater Press, 89 pages, Ebook, Review copy 

Content: time travel, American history, adventure,

Summary from Inkwater Press

 In 1988 Riley Travis is a young graduate student at Cornell University. A letter from her past takes her back to Brooklyn in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial, when she was an imaginative, stage-struck twelve-year-old going on thirteen. A time when there were no computers, cell phones or malls and everyone shopped on Main Street, where she goes to find her Street of Dreams. There she makes a new friend: an out-of-work newspaper reporter who has a big influence on her life. We meet her family, friends and teachers and see life through her eyes, part-child part-teenager, as America is much too busy celebrating its 200th birthday to pay much attention to what is happening to her. Her dealings with the adult world that she lives in and her observations on what she sees turn everything that happens into an adventure in growing up.

Nayu's thoughts

I ought to know better that just because a book is short doesn't mean it can't have an impact, but I was taken away with how captivating Riley's life is. I absolutely loved how she went back to the past, and what she experienced there. I almost didn't want her to return to her normal time, because she created many friends and grew tremendously in character. 

Riley learns to appreciate life in an era before mobile phones and computers were the norm and highly advanced, something which will stand her in good stead in her future. She has a few challenges to tackle along the way, and it felt like she belonged back in the 80s, but somehow she manages and the end is satisfying, especially how her past connects with her future self (she gets back there eventually). There's nothing specific about this book to gain the 9/10E grade, it just was't a full grade read