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Mira’s Diary: Home Sweet Rome (MMGM!)

Apr 22, 2013 | , , , , ,

I really love time-travel books, and one of the things I’ve enjoyed about reading lots of them is that different authors tend to focus on distinct aspects of time travel. The Time Traveler’s Wife focuses on how it affected relationships; Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is about the greater what-ifs and how a time traveler can affect the whole world. Before I Fall was time travel-ish (in a Groundhog Day kind of way), and in it the protagonist experienced significant (and heartbreaking) personal growth through repeating time. There are lots of other examples (and if you have suggestions of other good time-travel books, let me know! I already have a copy of Time & Again waiting on my shelf, and Time Between Us is on my list of books to be bought), of course.

In the Mira’s Diary MG series, author Marissa Moss uses time travel for adventure and to educate readers: about history, art, tolerance, and some big ideas. It’s really a genius blend. Even as a non-MG reader, I feel like I know so much more about lesser-known historical figures, iconic places, and art after reading each book. The first was set in Paris, and the latest is set in Rome. From the jacket:

As if traveling to a new country in search of her missing mother weren’t difficult enough, Mira has to do it dressed as a boy. In a different century.


A new postcard from her time-traveling mother points Mira to 16th century Rome. But before she can rescue her mom, she must follow the clues left around the city to find Giordano Bruno, a famous thinker and mathematician, who discovered something so shocking that important Italian officials don’t want it revealed. All the while avoiding the Watchers–time-traveling police who want Mira back in her own time.


It’s another whirlwind adventure for Mira, and this time she is determined to bring her mother out of the past.

Back to how Mira’s Diary uses time travel to introduce some pretty cool ideas to its readers. This is one of my favorite passages in the book, coming after Mira encounters Giordano Bruno while trapped in a Roman prison:

“What I grasped was an impression of the world full of glinting lights, a million futures, a zillion possibilities, an infinite number of ways forward and back. It was all so perfectly beautiful, so incredibly ingenuous, like the way you can find math in nature–from the swirls of seashells to the spines of pinecones. When dawn streamed in the high window, I hadn’t moved at all, but I felt like I’d time-traveled in a totally different way.” (p.126)

Beautiful and really cool, right? I love how ideas are a form of time travel in the Mira books, along with the actual jumps in time Mira and her mom take while on their adventures.

The Mira books are smart, engrossing, and relatable for MG readers–and they have great spot illustrations, too. I can’t wait to see where time takes Mira next.

To see what other marvelous middle-grade books readers and writers are blogging about today, check out Shannon Whitney Messenger’s blog for the MMGM links!

Disclaimer: I am a Sourcebooks author, and Sourcebooks did provide me with a copy of Mira’s Diary: Home Sweet Rome to read. But as always, my opinions are my own!

Guest Post: MG Author Jordan Jacobs

Nov 6, 2012 | , , , , , , ,

Today I’m excited to host Jordan Jacobs, author of the MG mystery Samantha Sutton and the Labyrinth of Lies, for a guest post. Samantha Sutton features a whipsmart and adventurous heroine, a realistic sibling relationship, lots of action and adventure, and loads of very cool archeology factoids. Jordan Jacobs really does have my childhood dream job: an archaeologist who write novels on the side. When he’s not writing the Samantha Sutton series, what is his archaeology work like? I pictured something straight out of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. Read on to find out what an archaeologist really does.


Just Another Day at the Office
Jordan Jacobs

The movies don’t get everything wrong when it comes to archaeology. Even in real life, there’s plenty of adventure to be found.

As an archaeologist, I’ve gotten to work high in the Andes at Chavin de Huantar—crawling through unexplored tunnels full of bats and rubble and scattered human bones. I’ve excavated Crustumerium, just north of Rome, where Bronze Age peoples lie at rest in a sprawling city of the dead. I’ve worked in the United States as well, clearing cemeteries in advance of major construction projects, excavating cliff dwellings, and digging the toilet of a California governor from the wreckage of his earthquake-totalled mansion.

But of course, this sort of adventure is only part of the job.

An archaeologist’s task is to study past cultures through what they’ve left behind. These pieces of evidence—or “artifacts”—can be as big as an Egyptian pyramid or as small as a speck of pollen, stuck to an ancient cooking pot. But the information they contain can be surprising. Archaeologists can use these artifacts to reconstruct how people once lived—from the food they ate, to the way they fought, to the religions that they practiced and their views of the world around them.

The archaeologist’s “typical day” takes a variety of forms. Some work mostly in the field–surveying the land, digging precise excavation units into the earth, looking for patterns, making comparisons, and drawing careful conclusions from whatever pieces of the past still remain. Others work in laboratories, using the tools of science to discover how old an object is, exactly what it’s made of, or precisely where it came from. Still others spend their days in museum storerooms, re-examining the evidence recovered by their predecessors. And some archaeologists work with governments and companies in order to protect sites from destruction through development, looting, neglect, or war.

But archaeology also carries a lot of responsibility. One awkward truth is that excavation destroys sites, meaning that each particular discovery can be made only once. It’s up to the archaeologist to record everything he or she can–otherwise, that information is lost forever. Just as importantly, archaeologists have a responsibility to the people who live nearby the site, or who claim it as their ancestors’.

At its best, archaeology is a little like time travel. Holding an artifact in your hand can make you feel a connection to someone who lived centuries or millennia before. It’s intimate. It’s humbling. Seeing the fingerprint of a potter on the surface of a plain and broken pot is a reminder of the humanity all people share–no matter where, or when, we live.

*Full disclosure: I share a publisher, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, with Jordan Jacobs. I purchased my own copy of Samantha Sutton, however, and any opinions are my own.*

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