Countdown to Yesterday

Marr, Shirley. Countdown to Yesterday
June 18, 2024 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

James is 11, and things are tense in his house. His mother, who has never before made a cake for the school fundraiser, has decided to take on the most difficult one in the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake book for her first attempt. While her own mother, who had immigrated from China, didn't use this revered cookbook, she is determined to finally make James a cake. She makes James go to school early to get assigned that choice and everything. This is just one of the tell tale signs that something is wrong in his house. His mother and father seem at odds, so it's only slightly surprising when his mother says that she has found a new apartment. His father is staying in the house, with all of his computer equipment he uses for his job as well as his musical instruments. Around this time, James runs into Yan, who always has her nose in a vintage computer textbook, and the two commiserate about the difficulties with parents. They also hang out in the school library, in the room where the librarians stock pile old books and equipment, and come up with the idea of a time machine. Yan says she has created one, and even James' father claims that computers might make this possible. As things escalate with his mother's baking and her encounters with the mother of James' nemesis, who also wants to make the rocket cake, James becomes determined to travel to the past to revisit happy memories. When Yan and James make this happen, will James choose to remain in the past, or does revisiting it give him new insights?
Strengths: I'm a fan of time travel books, so enjoyed the combination of computers that James and Yan were able to cobble together in order to make time travel work. The idea of traveling through an Internet Archive "WayBack Machine", but to the actual place and time rather than a web site, was intriguing. I also enjoyed the birthday cake cookbook mentions, although I feel compelled to note that the US Baker's Coconut Cut-Up Cakes is very similar and predates this by a couple of decades. Yan and James work well together, and the depiction of the divorce and the new living arrangements will resonate with many young readers. 

Weaknesses: While I personally enjoyed all of the cake details, there should have been fewer of those and more details about time travel for the target demographic, especially readers in the US for whom this book won't have any emotional connections. 
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Edge's The Many Worlds of Albie Bright or Welford's Time Traveling with a Hamster.