MOLLY MOON'S HYPNOTIC TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE
by Georgia Byng
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060750324
Ages 8-12
400 pages

In this third book of the Molly Moon series, 11-year-old master hypnotist Molly is recently reunited with her mother, Lucy, after 11 years in an orphanage. Molly herself rescued Lucy from a long hypnotic spell. However, Lucy is not happy; she is full of regret for the years she has missed.

Petula, Molly's pug dog, is also a hypnotist. Like Molly, Petula has the ability to stop time. When a suspicious turbaned stranger appears working as a gardener, Petula knows she must protect Molly. But when Molly goes outside, there's a loud BOOM and both the gardener and Petula vanish.

Molly confides in her father, her friend Rocky, and her older hippie pal Forest. They can't keep Molly from being hypnotized by the pug-napper, who takes her back in time to nineteenth-century India where she actually sees herself three years younger.

Molly and Petula meet the kidnapper's master, Waqt, a time-traveling giant who is angry because he wanted Molly Moon at a younger age --- before she became a hypnotist --- so he could foil her previous adventure in which she inadvertently ruined his plans to make his patsy president of the United States. Waqt's goal is to mine more of the time travel crystals enabling him to travel to the beginning of time, bathe in the light, and become young again. Waqt blackmails Molly (by threatening to turn Petula into pug curry) into time traveling to do his bidding.

I delighted in the quirky characters, including the hippie dude Forest and the English-muddling Waqt, and loved the completely original plot in which Molly hopes to rescue several younger Molly Moons. The reader also gleans some fascinating facts on India's sights, history and culture.

Although I was slightly befuddled by the time shifts and differing points of view of the different-aged Mollys and Petulas, the action and wry humor kept me reading on to see if and how Molly saved the day. MOLLY MOON'S HYPNOTIC TIME TRAVEL ADVENTURE is technically a stand-alone novel, but I recommend reading the previous books in the series first for the background story --- and for pure pleasure!

   --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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