Tracy Barrett has written the only middle grade novel of which I am aware that brings together time travel, human sacrifice, and the Etruscans in a story that makes the reader feel good. Hector is eleven years old and annoyed that he has to accompany his archaeologist mother to a dig site in Italy when he could be spending his summer playing with his new friends in Tennessee. When he finds an amulet, although the archaeologists deny that it could have any importance, it serves to connect him to a young Etruscan boy who is in trouble. Can Hector help him? Will the adults take the time to listen to an eleven-year-old child? Barrett does a beautiful job of keeping the reader in suspense about serious issues of life and death without being overly frightening. Particularly satisfying is the feeling the reader emerges with: children can make a difference in history. Graduates of the Magic Tree House books and fans of Caroline Lawrence’s The Time Travel Diaries will find themselves on familiar ground, even as they explore a culture with which they are likely unfamiliar.  -Nava Cohen