Button Box by Ruth Enright is a different kind of YA Fantasy novel. The way I read it was more of a primer on Victorian England.
Those are the sections that really come alive in this novel.
Susan is a young girl who is quite unhappy that her father is remarrying, especially since her new siblings are less than nice to her. She has an old button box that she likes to play with.
Little does she know that it actually gives her access to 1850s London. There, she becomes the de facto sister of Baxter, a street urchin straight out of a Charles Dickens novel.
For me, the segments where Susan is in London with Baxter were much more alive than those in her modern life. It sort of felt like, yeah, she’s getting a bad deal out of her dad’s remarriage and her siblings are awful.
There is not a lot of new ground to be broken here.
But in London with Baxter, there is a world of characters and experiences that let Susan escape her “regular” life. The world that the author creates here is encompassing and engaging.
I felt like the author preferred to stay in that era, as more of the book occurs there. Susan’s current home life is simply a vehicle to get her to the past. I suppose the book could have been written set solely in London.
But then I would have been missing the time travel aspect, which does lend a bit of “coolness.” I think that time travel is necessary also because it gives the feeling of escape.
Readers at any age will be able to relate to the need to go somewhere else to get away from everyday life.
Button Box is a very clever YA fantasy novel. Ruth Enright has presented Victorian London (in all its good and bad) in a way that will enchant young readers.
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