Once upon another time

by Robert C. Lee

The face that stared back at me was pimple-marked, the head thick-haired…. Yes, it was my face, all right. Or at least it had been…. This would have to be the forties… sometime during the Second World War…. The car that came down the driveway was a black 1941 Packard Clipper…. Yeah, I remembered. That was the first car I ever drove.

Earlier that morning, middle-aged and unhappy, Bob was driving his Mustang on a highway in the Ozarks, when a truck hit him. The next thing he knows, he is what he used to be—a fifteen-year-old high school boy in New Jersey. Soon he is playing football again in a light, youthful body—only playing it with more confidence than before—and finding bitter-sweet joy in getting to know a girl he had been too shy to meet the first time around. Could these small changes affect the future? he wonders uneasily. And there is danger and suspicion in this paradoxical situation, too. For young Bob knows far too much for his own good. Where, for instance, did a fifteen-year-old learn about the supersecret atom bomb? FBI men, hostile and suspicious, question him for hours, and Nazi agents threaten his life.
Adventure, excitement, and nostalgia stud this delightful story of time travel, poignant and gripping by turn. For fate has given Mr. Lee's brash hero the chance that many of us dream about—the chance to go back and live our youth over again, and this time to play it right.

Genres: Time Travel

153 pages, Loose Leaf

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Rebecca Light]

Once Upon Another Time is the story of Robert (Bobby) Crawford. The story begins with Bobby waking up to his family checking on him. He's not sure why, but he finds out that he had an accident in their barn and had been "unconscious" for a short period of time. Bobby is confused that he is his 15 year old self, because he had already lived this part of his life, was just a middle aged man, and is married with three kids. He's not sure how he got back to this time, but the last thing he remembers is driving down a road in Missouri and seeing a huge truck come straight towards him. He wonders if this is all a dream and that maybe in his lying in a hospital unconscious after the car wreck. As things continue, he settles back into his normal 15 year old self routine. However, he does things differently this time around since he's already lived through it once and is technically an adult (at least he thinks). He also does things he was scared to do the firs time he was 15 like stand up to boys who bully/bullied him and talking to the girl, Susie, that he was always too shy to talk to on the bus. It also happens that this is the time during WWII. Bobby has a big mouth and ends up telling some of his family, including his Army brother-in-law about outcomes and very top secret details about the war. Because of his brother-in-law's connection to the army, he takes Bobby in to be questioned by other officers. It seems to them that he's not crazy, and may actually be from the future. They tell him to be careful and want Frank (brother-in-law) to keep an eye on him at all times. Bobby doesn't like being watched and sneaks out one night to see his girl, Susie. He picks her up in his car and they go park it by a lake to talk. As they are talking, someone suddenly covers Bobby's mouth and nose and then everything goes dark. When Bobby wakes up, he has some sort of vision or flashback and he sees the inside of a hospital room, a TV, and white walls around him. He then wakes up and sees that he is not in the hospital, but has been captured by some Germans who are working for the enemy in the war. They try their hardest to get information out of him, but he either lies or doesn't give them the answer they're wanting. He does find out that Susie got captured along with him and is thankfully safe. One day, the Germans decide to take Bobby and Susie back to their leaders in Germany. As the boat is leaving, Bobby and Susie jump ship and the ship ends up exploding, because the Germans secretly weren't taking them to Germany, but just wanted to get rid of them. In the explosion, Bobby is knocked unconscious and has another vision of being back in the Missouri hospital. He then wakes up and sees that he is back home safely. in the explosion, US boats came and found Bobby and Susie and took them home safely. Bobby then finds out he has to have a meeting with the President, during which, Bobby tells him he's done sharing information and doesn't want to change the future for the worse. The President agrees and lets Bobby return home, still under close watch from the government. Bobby is happy to finally return to his normal life and even gets to play in his football game the next day. During the game, Bobby is hit hard in the chin twice by opposing players. The second time, he is knocked so hard that he returns to vision in the hospital. The doctor talks to him and says he experienced a sever car wreck and then calls his wife in, who happens to be Susie instead of the wife he had before the car wreck. He then realizes that it wasn't all a dream; he had really changed his future and was excited to see what else would be different.

I loved reading this book and got lost in it easily. It was intriguing and had a lot of humor. I haven't had a book that was hard to put done in a long time and I'm really glad I discovered this one. The story is a really neat concept and still leaves some questions unanswered because you never really know why Robert was able to time travel.

I would suggest this book for Middle school students. It's fun, exciting, and appropriate. It also lends to discussion of whether or not they would change things in the past if they had the opportunity and whether or not it would be a good thing to change the past or not. It's a good opportunity to discussion choices and consequences.

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have read this a few times so I obviously like it. It is a bit far fetched but still good premise. When a middle aged man is in a accident he ends up back in 1943 as his 15 year old self. It is a lot of fun to read!

[Ali Robinson]

Bobby was living his normal, day-to-day life as a middle-aged man driving to work one morning. After getting into a car accident, he suddenly wakes up and is fifteen again. He goes to school, he plays on the football team again, and he even talks to a girl he had always had a crush on but was too scared to pursue, yet he wonders in the back of his mind how it will change the future. After seventeen days of reliving his teenage years, Bobby is in the middle of playing a football game when a tackle sends him back to reality. When he wakes up, his life has changed; he never married Carolyn and ended up with the girl he had always wanted to be with, Susie.
I think this book was a really fun and easy read, and I think it's something that would be appropriate for fourth or fifth graders. I think they would really enjoy reading about all of the things that Bobby encountered (football, his teachers, the girl he liked, and even getting questioned by authorities based on information he knew later in life) and how his story turns out.
I think this story focuses a lot on how things in life can change so quickly, and how it's important that we take hold of the opportunities we have while we have the chance. So, for an activity, I think it could be a good idea for students to write out a list of five things they want to either do or to change/do differently. I think in the spirit of being courageous and taking hold of opportunity as it comes, writing out goals and challenging themselves to do better and to be better will really capture the essence of this story. I think it would also be something for the students to hold onto throughout the year to tell whether they're staying on track or not.