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Darby Christopher #1
A Walk Through A Window
If you had a chance to step through a window to the past, would you take it?
A Walk Through a Window is the story of Darby, a young girl forced to spend the summer with grandparents she doesn’t know in a place she feels she can never belong. But when a boy down the street extends a hand, it is more than friendship he offers. Together they discover a magical stone window frame that transports them to the very centre of the dramas of our the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato Famine; and even the Inuit as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America.
Over the course of the long, very strange summer, Darby is forced to question part of own her life. And as tragedy threatens her family, that magical walk through a window offers Darby new insight into the people she has always taken for granted – and changes forever her perception of Canada.
A Walk Through a Window is the story of Darby, a young girl forced to spend the summer with grandparents she doesn’t know in a place she feels she can never belong. But when a boy down the street extends a hand, it is more than friendship he offers. Together they discover a magical stone window frame that transports them to the very centre of the dramas of our the Underground Railroad; the coffin ships of the Irish Potato Famine; and even the Inuit as they crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America.
Over the course of the long, very strange summer, Darby is forced to question part of own her life. And as tragedy threatens her family, that magical walk through a window offers Darby new insight into the people she has always taken for granted – and changes forever her perception of Canada.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2009
3 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
K.C. Dyer
10 books255 followerskc dyer loves travel and has literally flown around the world in search of fantastic stories. When not on the road, she resides in the wilds of British Columbia, where she walks her dogs in the woods and writes books. Her most recent novel, EIGHTY DAYS TO ELSEWHERE, is the madcap story of a young woman so desperate to save her family’s bookstore that she undertakes a race around the world, but ends up falling for her competition. kc is also the author of FINDING FRASER, an international bestseller in romantic comedy. And coming this fall, AN ACCIDENTAL ODYSSEY continues the ExLibris adventures: When an unexpected phone call derails a young woman’s wedding plans, it sparks an epic adventure around the magical, modern-day Mediterranean.
kc has spoken before thousands of readers — kids and adults — across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. She's been writer-in-residence at New Westminster Secondary School, and a featured presenter at the Surrey International Writers Conference, the National Council of English Teachers in the US; YouthWrite BC, Young Authors Kamloops, WORD Vancouver, Canadian Authors’ Association, OLA Super-Conference, SFU Southbank Writers, WriteOn Bowen, Word on the Lake and many others.
She is represented by Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency.
kc has spoken before thousands of readers — kids and adults — across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. She's been writer-in-residence at New Westminster Secondary School, and a featured presenter at the Surrey International Writers Conference, the National Council of English Teachers in the US; YouthWrite BC, Young Authors Kamloops, WORD Vancouver, Canadian Authors’ Association, OLA Super-Conference, SFU Southbank Writers, WriteOn Bowen, Word on the Lake and many others.
She is represented by Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 31, 2017
One of the liabilities of our having made a quick jaunt to Toronto recently is that, while Pam was off businessing for the day, I was within easy walking distance of, er, three -- countem, THREE -- good bookshops. My rucksack was interestingly . . . heavy on the way home: a good thing we did the journey by train rather than 'plane. But the good thing about the bookshops was that they offered a distinctively different selection of books than I'm accustomed to seeing here in NJ, and so I was able to pick up this Canadian YA time-travel novel. And jolly good it is too.
13-year-old gloomyguts brat Darby is sent to spend a few weeks with her grandparents in "one-lobster town" Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and immediately assumes she's going to have a ghastly time of it. But then she runs into the mysterious boy Gabe, who lives in the big blue house on the corner even though everyone assumes that house is derelict. Still whingeing in her customary way, Darby allows Gabe to lead her to the ruined chapel in the blue house's big garden; on stepping with him through the gaping window she is transported back through time, to a prehistoric era where the ancestors of the Inuit survive as best they can in a glaciated Canada. Gabe is a member of the little clan among which Darby finds herself, and apparently always has been; she herself has a different status in that she has a sort of weak interaction with the physical world, whereby she can't influence it (humans aside from Gabe are unaware of her presence and animals have just a vague inkling that she's there) but it can influence her -- if she falls over she hurts herself. During one of her later trips she realizes the nub of it: "She was a ghost from another time" (p127).
She spends a couple of days with the proto-Inuit, then is directed toward a means of getting home to her own time. In each of her two subsequent trips -- one to a coffin ship come to Canada bearing immigrants from Ireland and plagued witrh smallpox and typhus, the other aboard a much more civilized immigrant vessel, carrying one of her ancestors -- the pattern continues of Gabe, her guide, being already present in, and playing an active role in, the world while Darby herself has just a ghostly presence and, at visit's end, must find a portal to be able to escape homeward. Meanwhile, between trips, Darby is learning about her own and Charlottetown's history, learning to relate to her idiosyncratic Nan and, as he descends into Alzheimers, Gramps, and (no prizes for guessing this bit) generally growing up to a much nicer child than when she came to Prince Edward Island just a few short weeks ago. The events of her real life, and the lives of those around her, are not trivial; but what she has witnessed during her cross-temporal journeys helps her cope with them, if for no other reason than that, however grim things might get for her in the 21st century, she's come face-to-face with worse elsewhen.
The book has it moments of humour, as when the still rather prissy, self-absorbed Darby at one point goes through the reasons why her latest temporal sojourn isn't a dream:
"Two: Shoes do not get soaked in dreams." Well, unless you counted that unfortunate time when she was four and mistook her mother's closet for the bathroom in the middle of the night. But hey, she was a little kid. (p117)
We never do discover who Gabe really is, which is just fine: that's what you'd expect of an elemental, after all. Less satisfyingly, there's another kid whom Darby encounters a couple of times in modern Charlottetown: he serves no plot purpose and seems just to get forgotten about. And I did get rattled when what's been established archaeological knowledge for decades was described half-dismissively as "some professor who had a theory that the way the first native people came to North America was over a land bridge on the Bering Strait" (p84). Otherwise I enjoyed this adventure just fine . . . although I did wonder if its intended YA readership would like it as much as I did, if they might fi\nd it a bit -- gasp! -- educational in feel. Well, if so, that's their tough luck: the book worked just fine for moi.
Kind of shameful GoodReads doesn't have a cover pic for this one, isn't it? Or maybe the shame is that no publisher has picked up the US or UK rights. Who knows? I'm just damn' glad my visit to Toronto enabled me to find a copy.
UPDATE 3/31/2017: I see Goodreads nows has a cover pic.
13-year-old gloomyguts brat Darby is sent to spend a few weeks with her grandparents in "one-lobster town" Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and immediately assumes she's going to have a ghastly time of it. But then she runs into the mysterious boy Gabe, who lives in the big blue house on the corner even though everyone assumes that house is derelict. Still whingeing in her customary way, Darby allows Gabe to lead her to the ruined chapel in the blue house's big garden; on stepping with him through the gaping window she is transported back through time, to a prehistoric era where the ancestors of the Inuit survive as best they can in a glaciated Canada. Gabe is a member of the little clan among which Darby finds herself, and apparently always has been; she herself has a different status in that she has a sort of weak interaction with the physical world, whereby she can't influence it (humans aside from Gabe are unaware of her presence and animals have just a vague inkling that she's there) but it can influence her -- if she falls over she hurts herself. During one of her later trips she realizes the nub of it: "She was a ghost from another time" (p127).
She spends a couple of days with the proto-Inuit, then is directed toward a means of getting home to her own time. In each of her two subsequent trips -- one to a coffin ship come to Canada bearing immigrants from Ireland and plagued witrh smallpox and typhus, the other aboard a much more civilized immigrant vessel, carrying one of her ancestors -- the pattern continues of Gabe, her guide, being already present in, and playing an active role in, the world while Darby herself has just a ghostly presence and, at visit's end, must find a portal to be able to escape homeward. Meanwhile, between trips, Darby is learning about her own and Charlottetown's history, learning to relate to her idiosyncratic Nan and, as he descends into Alzheimers, Gramps, and (no prizes for guessing this bit) generally growing up to a much nicer child than when she came to Prince Edward Island just a few short weeks ago. The events of her real life, and the lives of those around her, are not trivial; but what she has witnessed during her cross-temporal journeys helps her cope with them, if for no other reason than that, however grim things might get for her in the 21st century, she's come face-to-face with worse elsewhen.
The book has it moments of humour, as when the still rather prissy, self-absorbed Darby at one point goes through the reasons why her latest temporal sojourn isn't a dream:
"Two: Shoes do not get soaked in dreams." Well, unless you counted that unfortunate time when she was four and mistook her mother's closet for the bathroom in the middle of the night. But hey, she was a little kid. (p117)
We never do discover who Gabe really is, which is just fine: that's what you'd expect of an elemental, after all. Less satisfyingly, there's another kid whom Darby encounters a couple of times in modern Charlottetown: he serves no plot purpose and seems just to get forgotten about. And I did get rattled when what's been established archaeological knowledge for decades was described half-dismissively as "some professor who had a theory that the way the first native people came to North America was over a land bridge on the Bering Strait" (p84). Otherwise I enjoyed this adventure just fine . . . although I did wonder if its intended YA readership would like it as much as I did, if they might fi\nd it a bit -- gasp! -- educational in feel. Well, if so, that's their tough luck: the book worked just fine for moi.
Kind of shameful GoodReads doesn't have a cover pic for this one, isn't it? Or maybe the shame is that no publisher has picked up the US or UK rights. Who knows? I'm just damn' glad my visit to Toronto enabled me to find a copy.
UPDATE 3/31/2017: I see Goodreads nows has a cover pic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 21, 2016
I did not really like this book, which is disappointing because the idea is good, and I was really looking forward to reading it. Overall, the writing was too heavy-handed and overdone, plus I disliked the protagonist, Darby Christopher immensely, and there are some really inaccurate and/or annoying details in the book. By the first third of the book I hated this character and would have tossed it through the window but for the fact I needed it for a reading challenge; next time, I will choose to fail the challenge. Life is just too short for bad books.
Darby was one of the elements of the book that was overdone. I think this book was supposed to be a 'coming of age'-type book with Darby starting out annoying and maturing over the summer. However, Darby started out a horrible pill and failed to get much better over the course of the story. She is also ignorant, in a 'willfully trying to not know about anything' type of way, but also condescending toward everyone around her. Darby was ignorant to the point that the book is an insult to the Toronto School system and everyone who teaches in as Darby failed to comprehend even the most basic of basics that children in Canada, and especially Southern Ontario would/should know. Additionally, while she is supposed to be thirteen she acts like a temperamental two-year old.
Additionally there were a number of points where I was saying what?!? You're kidding me?!? A few of the larger ones:
-Maurice, the 'male' calico cat. NO! Calico cats are female, and yes, the author described the white with the coloured patches. Calico genes are X chromosome genes and so it is a phenotype that shows up only on the xx genotype (females) (OK yes in rare occasions also xxy mutated gene males but I somehow doubt that this author would be able to come up with that, and if she did she failed to mention it). Except in the rarest of cases calicos are females
-Darby, who grew up in Toronto on the shore of Lake Ontario, seemed to be completely unaware of the existence of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Seriously?!? How was this not taught to her in school? Or how is she so stupid that after years of schooling she knows nothing about it?
-Although knowing little to nothing about the most basics facts of Canadian history and geography, Darby's teacher apparently did take the time to teach them about the US Civil War, including the finer details of the different types of guns used during that country's war. Seriously?!? The reader is to believe that the T.O. School system opted out of teaching Canadian studies while instead replacing this work with studies of the history of a foreign country? NO, just NO.
-a boy was added to the story who contributed nothing to the plot but instead just seemed to supply another outlet for Darby to be her whining, b**chy self. Really, was that necessary? I mean, it does not take too many pages or too many interactions with others for the reader to figure out that Darby is a whiny B**ch.
Nope, I did not like this book, and am upset because the premise was so good. I will avoid reading other books by this author.
Darby was one of the elements of the book that was overdone. I think this book was supposed to be a 'coming of age'-type book with Darby starting out annoying and maturing over the summer. However, Darby started out a horrible pill and failed to get much better over the course of the story. She is also ignorant, in a 'willfully trying to not know about anything' type of way, but also condescending toward everyone around her. Darby was ignorant to the point that the book is an insult to the Toronto School system and everyone who teaches in as Darby failed to comprehend even the most basic of basics that children in Canada, and especially Southern Ontario would/should know. Additionally, while she is supposed to be thirteen she acts like a temperamental two-year old.
Additionally there were a number of points where I was saying what?!? You're kidding me?!? A few of the larger ones:
-Maurice, the 'male' calico cat. NO! Calico cats are female, and yes, the author described the white with the coloured patches. Calico genes are X chromosome genes and so it is a phenotype that shows up only on the xx genotype (females) (OK yes in rare occasions also xxy mutated gene males but I somehow doubt that this author would be able to come up with that, and if she did she failed to mention it). Except in the rarest of cases calicos are females
-Darby, who grew up in Toronto on the shore of Lake Ontario, seemed to be completely unaware of the existence of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Seriously?!? How was this not taught to her in school? Or how is she so stupid that after years of schooling she knows nothing about it?
-Although knowing little to nothing about the most basics facts of Canadian history and geography, Darby's teacher apparently did take the time to teach them about the US Civil War, including the finer details of the different types of guns used during that country's war. Seriously?!? The reader is to believe that the T.O. School system opted out of teaching Canadian studies while instead replacing this work with studies of the history of a foreign country? NO, just NO.
-a boy was added to the story who contributed nothing to the plot but instead just seemed to supply another outlet for Darby to be her whining, b**chy self. Really, was that necessary? I mean, it does not take too many pages or too many interactions with others for the reader to figure out that Darby is a whiny B**ch.
Nope, I did not like this book, and am upset because the premise was so good. I will avoid reading other books by this author.
May 20, 2009
What a sloppily written book! Statements in one chapter are contradicted in the next. Sometime this happens within a paragraph. It is as though the author never ever re-read what she wrote and certainly there was no editor.
The writing is very clunky.
The story is trite and have been better done many other times.
A great disappointment.
The writing is very clunky.
The story is trite and have been better done many other times.
A great disappointment.
December 19, 2021
Darby is spending the summer with her grandparents on Prince Edward Island in Canada. She has brought her skateboard, but is afraid that she will be terribly bored. But then she meets an odd boy who brings her through an old stone window and into Canada’s past, starting with a visit to the Inuit. In some ways, she is like a ghost, but there are real dangers. When she returns to the present, she has a terrible migraine and wonders if it was all a hallucination. But further journeys await her, with connections to her family’s past.
May 8, 2017
A Walk Through a Window is the story of Darby Christopher, a young girl who is forced to visit her quirky grandparents in PEI over the summer. When she meets a boy, Gabe, at an abandoned house down the street, he shows her an unusual world where the past comes to life, literally.
I would classify this book as a historical fiction for young adults. As a historical fiction buff, I quite enjoyed this book. I felt the scenes of the past were brought to life and were interesting to me. The strength of the book, seems to happen in the last half of the book, as Darby forms more of a bond with her family. I found the ending quite heart warming.
I did have some problems with the book, but overall they weren't deal breakers; I just felt there were places I would have liked to see more.
First of all, Darby shows up and she seems quite irritable and stand-offish. I wanted to know why she was like this, what had jaded her? I was curious about her life in Toronto and what her strengths and issues are, why was she sort of bitchy at the beginning?
I would have liked to have known more about Gabe. Ok, cool he is a time traveller, but why? how? What made him this way? Maybe we will find out more in the next book?
I liked the character of Gramps. He seemed to be the most well-rounded character in the book. We had a good idea of his past, his struggles, his issues and his heart. I would have liked to have a better sense of Darby.
My other point is that this book doesn't have a lot of conflict. I think if the author made more of a background for Darby, we would see more of why it is important that she learns these lessons from the past. I kept reading though and was glad I did because the book does finish strong.
Anyway, I did enjoy it and was glad I kept reading. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
I would classify this book as a historical fiction for young adults. As a historical fiction buff, I quite enjoyed this book. I felt the scenes of the past were brought to life and were interesting to me. The strength of the book, seems to happen in the last half of the book, as Darby forms more of a bond with her family. I found the ending quite heart warming.
I did have some problems with the book, but overall they weren't deal breakers; I just felt there were places I would have liked to see more.
First of all, Darby shows up and she seems quite irritable and stand-offish. I wanted to know why she was like this, what had jaded her? I was curious about her life in Toronto and what her strengths and issues are, why was she sort of bitchy at the beginning?
I would have liked to have known more about Gabe. Ok, cool he is a time traveller, but why? how? What made him this way? Maybe we will find out more in the next book?
I liked the character of Gramps. He seemed to be the most well-rounded character in the book. We had a good idea of his past, his struggles, his issues and his heart. I would have liked to have a better sense of Darby.
My other point is that this book doesn't have a lot of conflict. I think if the author made more of a background for Darby, we would see more of why it is important that she learns these lessons from the past. I kept reading though and was glad I did because the book does finish strong.
Anyway, I did enjoy it and was glad I kept reading. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
February 3, 2016
What an intriguing premise! What a disappointing book. Thirteen-year-old Darby has traveled from Toronto to visit her grandparents on Prince Edward's Island for the summer and she is not pleased at the prospect. The "excitement" begins when she climbs through a window and finds herself in another time and place. In reality, the book is repetitive, confusing and difficult to follow. I purchased the sequel at the same time and I hope it is more interesting than A Walk Through a Window. If not, it's going to take me a while to read the 218 pages of Facing Fire.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews