Running Out of Time / Margaret Peterson Haddix / 184 pages

Richard Peck said that "If Ray Bradbury had written The Giver, the result might rival Margaret Peterson Haddix's Running Out of Time."  Jessie lives with her family in the frontier village of Clifton, Indiana.  When diphtheria strikes the village and children start dying, Jessie's mother reveals a horrifying secret.  The year is not 1837, but 1996.  Clifton was designed as a living history site similar to colonial Williamsburg, but whereas the people in Williamsburg were actors role-playing and returning to their twentieth century homes each evening, the residents of Clifton think the year was really 1837 and live accordingly.  Originally children were to be told the secret when they reached their twelfth birthday and given the option to remain in time-frozen Clifton or leave for the modern world.  That option is no longer offered.  Jessie's mother sends her outside Clifton to secure medicine to stop the diphtheria epidemic.  Great comparisons between the 1880's and the twentieth century and Jessie's reactions to the many modern changes make Running Out of Time an interesting and entertaining read.