Mark Shirrefs – John Thomson: The Girl from Tomorrow (Hodder and Stoughton 1990)
The Girl from Tomorrow was an Australian sci-fi series for kids in the ’90s. The series has been nominated for several awards and has won three of them internationally in the youth category. It was also airing in Hungary. The authors of the series made a book version of it. I didn’t see the series, I just read it in a book, first when I was in elementary school. Since then, however, I’ve re-read it countless times because I really enjoyed the story.
We’re in 3000. Society and technology are both advanced, people have learned from their (countless) past mistakes. Now they live in peace with nature, they hear nothing but the sounds of birds and insects, there is no engine roar – the internal combustion engines have reached the fate of dinosaurs. Then the first time machine is invented. The protagonist, Alana’s teacher, Tulista, tries it first, on a trip to 2500, to find out the causes of the Great Disaster. However, the experiment goes awry, and Alana finds herself in the “primitive and dangerous” past, in 1990. Here, a girl of her age, Jenny, helps her to blend in until she can get back to her own time.
A very kind and humorous story, full of excitement: something happens in every chapter. I’m glad I didn’t see the series because I can imagine the characters and their adventures on my own. I think it’s time to read it again!
