One minute Flora is dreaming on a train heading back to boarding school and the next a magic spell has spun Flora into the past. She’s mysteriously swapped lives with a schoolgirl in 1935! What a nightmare: no iPod, no mobile, no hair products and ridiculous rules. How will she survive? She has to speak French at breakfast, wear hideous baggy bloomers and sleep in a freezing dormitory. Flora also finds lots of positives in her new life but realises she must also find her way back to the 21st century and the reason for her time-travel. Full of magic and humour this wonderfully touching story will have girls desperate to join Flora on her time-travel escapades.
Twelve-year-old Flora Fox would do anything not to go to Penrice Hall, the boarding school her parents are shipping her off to because of a family emergency. Penrice has horses and an Olympic-size swimming pool, but flashy facilities won't change how Flora feels about being sent away and having to make new friends.
On the train ride to Penrice, Flora awakens from a nap to find herself transported into the past-1935, to be exact. As Flora rises to the challenges of her strange new life, she finds that the joys and complications of growing up are the same no matter what the year. And that friends and family will always be there to lend a helping hand.
Praise for Beswitched
A Junior Library Guild Selection
?"This absorbing novel…features a dimensional, delightful protagonist, whose personality and growth ring true....Along with the entertaining magical elements, the universal themes of self-discovery, and looking beyond appearances combine into a wholly engaging and enjoyable read."-Booklist, Starred Review
"Saunders offers a coming-of-age tale against the rich backdrop of full period detail . . . [It] will charm readers."-Publishers Weekly
"A ripping English boarding-school story with a perceptive heroine and time-travel twist guaranteed to appeal to modern schoolgirls."-Kirkus Reviews
Kate Saunders (May 1960 – April 2023) was the author of many books for adults and children. She won the Betty Trask Award and the Costa Children's Book Award and was twice shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Five Children on the Western Front and The Land of Neverendings.
She was also an actress and a journalist writing for the Sunday Times, Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph and Cosmopolitan, and has contributed to Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Start the Week and Kaleidoscope.
