Review of Switched! TJ and the Time Stumblers Book by Bill Myers

I haven't read any of the other books in this series. This is the fifth book about a girl named TJ and two time travelers from the twenty-third century, and their misadventures in the course of a middle school in the present time.

This is a chapter book for children with 156 pages and no pictures, a fact which concerned me a little when I first received the book. Would my children like this book? Would they be able to follow it?

I read it to them while they drank hot chocolate in the mornings. I decided that if they couldn't follow it or didn't like it, I would read it to myself. The first day, both of the older ones liked it a lot and laughed through the entire passage we read.

After the second day, my middle daughter no longer liked the book.When I asked her why, her answer was because TJ became bald. (I can understand this. Bald is a hard condition for a girl.)

My son laughed through the entire book. He enjoyed the silly problems that complicated things for the characters. He liked that the book was funny. He liked the characters. He liked the way the author wrapped up everything in the end.

I liked the book with only a few draw-backs. The book is entitled "Switched!" Well, it seems that the author wasn't content to switch the main character with her arch enemy, but had to switch many other characters as well. I personally felt that there were too many switches to make the story line easy to follow, but it didn't seem to cause problems for my children as they heard the story read aloud.

The book was good enough that we ended up reading one day for over an hour, because we were lost in the story and wanted to find out what happened next.

Recommended, but with the caveat that there are lots of characters who switch bodies, making it hard to keep straight who is talking.

I received this book free from Tyndale Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Tyndale. It opened an entirely new series to my family. We will probably read some more of these books.