THE TIME HACKERS
by Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books/Random House
ISBN: 0385746598
Ages 9-12
96 pages

When Dorso Clayman finds a human cadaver in his locker, he's not too surprised. After all, he's been the recipient of rats, frogs and dead dogs. And besides, the cadaver vanishes in less than a minute, as all the other practical jokes have. It's just a bummer, though, that his locker and gym clothes reek of cadaver.

Dorso knows that these are all holograms from the past. People can and do project images and smells from long ago, but who can be playing these smelly practical jokes on Dorso?

Even weirder things start happening to Dorso. George Armstrong Custer (of "Custer's Last Stand" fame) appears and looks right at Dorso. Next, Dorso sees Beethoven, who also is obviously looking directly at Dorso. But if Custer and Beethoven are simply holograms, how can they see him? When Dorso and his buddy Frank encounter a woolly mammoth that actually tosses Frank onto the ground, the boys are convinced that something very strange is going on.

The plot quickens when Frank and Dorso suddenly find themselves on an old-time warring pirate ship. They watch men fighting and dying --- and spy a young man working a computer keyboard. Hmmm.

Back in the present, the boys try to figure out what's happening. They should not be able to travel back in time because of the time paradox, which is a rule saying that you can't travel into the past because you could possibly kill your own ancestor, and then you wouldn't exist. And here Dorso and Frank are time-traveling back spontaneously!

The problem continues, and it's seriously hampering Dorso's social life. When he is assigned the girl he has a crush on for a lab partner, he finds himself temporarily in a jungle facing a crocodile with sharp teeth and an "I want lunch" glint in its eye. Before Dorso is eaten, he's back in the lab with wet and muddy pants. His humiliation is complete when his crush looks in disgust at his pants and suggests he get help for his "problem." Yet that mortification is nothing when the boys find out what actually is going on --- an activity that could potentially end the world and everything in it. Can the boys save the universe?

Gary Paulsen's THE TIME HACKERS is an exciting, funny, quick read --- and thoroughly enjoyable.

   --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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