The Tinkerers - by Caroline Carlson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The astromancers in Peter's star-touched village have an amazing device that nudges time--surely it wouldn't hurt if Peter used it to fix a few mistakes? Cozy fantasy alight with wonder from the author of Wicked Marigold.

When Peter leads two Tinkerers to his family's inn in Stargazers Valley, he imagines they're like other astromancers, researchers from the Imperial College who study starstuff. The valley is a special place, where the magical aurora called the Skeins appear in the sky and starstuff falls in their wake, as thin and wispy as fluff from a seed pod. But starstuff is powerful, and astromancers are the only people allowed to handle it--a law enforced by the strict and stealthy Outbounder Task Force. When Peter discovers the Tinkerers have used starstuff to invent an incredible not-a-clock that can turn back time for a few minutes, he realizes it's his chance to undo his mistakes: if he can go back and put away his new boots, he doesn't need to add their destruction by falcons to his list of ten worst mistakes (#7: stepping on a star-eating newt). But while using the not-a-clock is easy, stopping using it is hard. And maybe not everything that feels like a mistake at the time actually is. Family, friendship, and budding self-confidence are at the heart of Caroline Carlson's stellar fantasy.

Review Quotes

The ideas around time travel, do-overs, and responsibility are refreshingly relatable, and the story, whose every character is distinctly and humorously drawn, comes together in a brilliant synthesis of plot, theme, and good-natured chaos.
--The Horn Book (starred review)

Carlson's often humorous prose captures the big feelings of a boy on the precipice of adolescence. . . . A warmhearted fantasy tale about discovering the world's complexity and finding one's place in it.
--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Caroline Carlson is also the author of Wicked Marigold, the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates trilogy, The World's Greatest Detective, and The Door at the End of the World. Her novels have won accolades from the New York Times, the American Booksellers Association, Bank Street College of Education, the American Library Association, and Junior Library Guild. She holds an MFA in writing for children from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives with her family in Pittsburgh.