The Incredible Awesome Adventures of Puggie Liddell by Karen Muller Bryson
Reviewer: Jennifer Roman
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: Zeta Comics
Publication Date: June 21, 2011

Nerdy Puggie Liddell and his popular, but annoying sister, Gigi are on a school field trip to Thomas Edison’s estate when Puggie falls into the pool. He’s sucked into a whirlpool that transports him into another time dimension. When Gigi tries to help him, she too is pulled into late nineteenth-century America with her brother.

They set off to the World’s Fair in Chicago to find Edison who Puggie believes can help them get home. When they find Edison, however, he is so curious about time travel that he wants them to stay to study them. He’s also intrigued by Puggie’s Game Boy that happened to travel through time as well.

The siblings manage to escape, only to be captured by Edison’s enemy, Nikola Tesla, who also wants to study them. They end up meeting several luminaries of the era during their adventures, but what they want is to go home.  Despite constantly being at odds with one another, the brother and sister love each other very much and will do anything to protect each other.

This is an actual book, but it is a series that continues, much like a comic book.

Puggie and Gigi’s story is both fun and educational. I enjoyed the siblings’ bantering and teasing, reminiscent of my youth. I believe other readers will feel the same when reading this story. Puggie and Gigi, who have totally different personalities, are both very likeable and should come across as realistic to readers. There’s a lot of history crammed into the story, but it is presented in an interesting format that should appeal to both young readers and to adults. Their adventures can be both scary and funny. This is the world I always think about when I imagine time traveling, so I highly recommend that anyone who likes time travel stories read it. This is a very quick read but is suitable for novices.

Rated G
Book provided by the author