Past Perfect: Archer's Quest by Linda Sue Park

Newbery Award winner (A Single Shard, 2002) Linda Sue Park turns from her metier, the historical novel, to kid-pleasing time travel fantasy with a pleasant touch of Korean history, in her recent Archer's Quest.

Sixth-grader Kevin is a bit bored. Home alone because of a half-holiday from school, he's bouncing a superball around his room half-heartedly when suddenly an arrow pins his baseball cap to the wall without harming a hair on his head.

"Show me your hands, Strange One," a grim voice says.

"My arrow would end your life before you took a single step," he said. "Do not even think of fleeing."

Kevin's strange visitor is Asian, twenty-something, long haired, dressed in a white outfit vaguely like a karate instructor, with a bow and a quiver full of mean-looking arrows. He demands that Kevin answer his questions but ask none of his own.

"Little frog," he instructs, "...Ask the questions in your head, and then listen. The answers and more will come to you."

For Kevin, a third generation Korean-American, history is a bunch of dull, meaningless names and dates. He's pretty good at math, when he tries, but his parents are always nagging him to focus on things, to pay attention and learn everything he can. Now, he suddenly finds himself responsible for returning a warrior king, Koh Chu-Mong, back to the first century B.C. in Korea. Obliquely, without asking questions, Kevin learns that some strange confluence of magic, the Chinese Zodiac, and the cycle of elements--fire, earth, metal, water, and wood--has trapped Chu-Mong in Kevin's hometown of Dorcester, New York. There's only one day left in the Year of the Tiger, and Kevin fears that it's up to him to return the strange interloper to his own time before midnight.

There is plenty of humor along the way as Chu-Mong comes up with his own interpretation of the technology of Kevin's time--computers that contact magic spirits, cars that move with tiny fire dragons inside, and Chinese restaurants with stick-like eating tools. Kevin sneaks his visitor into the local museum to consult an authority on Korean history, learning that Chu-Mong was indeed known as the Great Archer, famed for his skill, and that he did unite his people into a progressive kingdom, even introducing chopsticks to Korea. The final pieces of the puzzle do not fall into place until Kevin does the math, using the twelve-year Chinese Zodiac and five-year cycle of the elements to deduce that he must bring Chu-Mong together with metal, a tiger, and earth to send him back to his own time. There's a bit of suspense as Kevin frets about getting his strange-looking guest through the city streets and campus of his local university, but at last the Great Archer mounts the bronze statue of a tiger which is the college's mascot and, with one last calendar re-calculation by Kevin, disappears safely back to his own time.

Park slips her bits of Korean history, folklore, and Asian self-discipline into the story skillfully, and there's enough suspense in Kevin's race against the Chinese calendar to keep readers turning the pages to the end of this well written fantasy. Kids who are familiar with the beginning chapters of the Time Warp Trio books by John Scieszka will feel right at home as they move up to this middle grader time travel tale by Linda Sue Park.