The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

In three words, this book is about time traveling pirates. Since this is a blog and only a few electrons will be discomfited with a longer post, I’ll use more than three words. Really, The Girl from Everywhere is a book about the captain of a pirate ship, Slate, who wants to travel back in time to 1868, when his wife, who had just given birth to their daughter Nix, had somehow just died. Slate’s hope is that if he can travel back in time to just before she dies, he can bring a cure and save her. But Nix, now a teenager, thinks that if they do go back in time, thanks to some paradox of the time-space continuum, she will be erased from existence. Nix wants to help, wants to know her mom, but she also really likes being, well, alive.  Throughout the book there are many adventures while they try to get back to Nix’s mom; they wind up in 19th Century China to an emperor’s tomb, they travel back to ancient Arabia and A Thousand and One Nights, they’re in New York City in 1981. Every time they find a new hand-drawn map they can travel to these places on their pirate ship on the high seas -- but it gets complicated. Give this book to students who like swashbuckling adventure stories.