Frozen in Time

Sparkes justifiably won the Blue Peter Children's Book Award 2010 with this novel, almost a twenty-first century update of a Blyton Famous Five adventure.

Indeed, two of the main characters are from the 1950s, frozen in time as early teenagers by their father’s experimentation into cryonics. Woken in 2009 by their thirteen-year old great-nephew and -niece, they find fifty years' worth of changes hard to cope with, especially when the reverberations of the Cold War threaten to plunge them into the world of espionage and official secrets.

This is an exciting thriller with a nail-biting denouement, and a great deal of humour, largely created by the difference between the experience and expectations of mid-twentieth and early twenty-first century children.