Timothy Mean and the Time Machine by William A.E. Ford – Review

Genre: Childres Book
Publication Date: August 2013
My Rating:

With Timothy Mean’s amazing imagination and time machine, anything and anywhere is possible!

Join Timothy on a magical rhyming adventure as he skips through time and pranks with pirates, gets daring with dragons, and even teases a T-Rex!

“It’s Monday. Hip hip hooray! Where shall we travel in time today?

With Timothy Mean, every day is a rhyme in time!

I received this book after the author contacted me and asked me if I was interested in doing a review for it. As I mention before I’m more than happy to help small authors get a little more exposure, so I said yes.  Before I start my review though a small disclaimer. Children’s book is not a genre that I read (in fact this is the first one I read sine I was a kid) and I do not have kids, so please take this review with a grain of salt.

Things I liked:

• I like the fact that Timothy travels through different eras and events. I think it’s a great way to teach a kid a little history.
• Because Timothy travels every day in a different place and sees so many things, from dinosaurs to pirates, to robots etc. I think every kid will find a part of the book that they love.
• The writing was nice and, as described in the summary,  rhymey.

Things I didn’t like

• Ok so I might be reading too deep into this but, throughout the story, Timothy is being naughty and pranks a lot, which will definitely make kids laugh but… After a couple of pages, I started wondering what kind of message that sends to kids. More specifically, Timothy travels to when his parents were kids and at school and pranks them, and I quote “Daddy cried and said boo-hoo”. Is it okay to have your main hero of the story make other kids cried without any consequences? Doesn’t that sound like saying that being mean to other kids it’s okay? Like I said I’m probably over analysing this, and I think that parent will be a better judge than me.