Leigh Walls cover illustration of a Cretaceous mosasaur swimming with its mouthful of pointed teeth grabs the viewers attention and screams, “Pick up this book!” I did. I had a hard time putting it down. Dinosaurs are to time travel as Jurassic Park is to Time Machine. What a combination. Hasn’t every dinosaur loving person always wanted to see a real living breathing dinosaur? Here is a book to live just that life vicariously!

It all begins with “Great-Grandpa Pierson, nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’, invents a Chronal Engine”… (time machine), but it can only be operated by remote control. Nate and Brady’s father has “spent most of his days and nights working on it and obsessing over it.” (3) The remote is called a Recall Device and Nate and Brady stumble across one in 1985 (their present time) and active it, traveling back to the Cretaceous Era.

Now the story goes back and forth being told first by Nate and then by Max. Max is Nate’s nephew from our present time. Uncle Nate is now a physicist.

Uncle Nate tells Max and his friend Petra,  “I need you to return to the Cretaceous, find me, and help me get back here. To 1985, actually…I can’t tell you a lot…I don’t think you’ll change the past by knowing what you’re going to do…The less you know, the better. (19)

Nate and Brady transported, in a bass boat, to the Cretaceous by the Recall Device. The Recall Device is dropped into the murky water. When Nate dives into the water to find it so they can return home to 1985, he is bitten by a mosasaur.

Meanwhile, Max and Petra have materialized at Mad Jack’s old island Cretaceous getaway. They begin looking for Uncle Nate, when an unknown someone secretly takes their Recall Device.  Then, while Max and Petra are down on the dock Mad Jack’s generator explodes catching the getaway on fire. Max and Petra quickly rescue as much of the stored supplies as they can before the fire consumes the buildings, taking the supplies down to a canoe at the water’s edge.

As Nate and Brady leave the mosasaur area heading for a narrow channel “on a fallen tree that bridged the channel, was a girl.” ( 43) Mildred, a time traveler they do not know, is looking for Max’s sister Emma. ” ‘My father used to work with Mad Jack Pierson but became afraid that he was becoming unstable and that leaving a time machine in his hands was dangerous. So my father sought out a person from the future who was important in the development of Mad Jack’s Chronal Machine.’ “(53) Mildred gets into the bass boat. Off in the distance they see the smoke from the burning getaway and head toward it.

Max and Petra are paddling their canoe when they encounter triceratops in the water. Their canoe cap-sizes, but they are able to rescue most of the canned food they’d brought from the getaway. Then, they see the bass boat and flag it down.  Brady and Max, two generations of Pierson, enjoy their banter back and forth about the dinosaurs they are encountering. The group decides to find a safe place off of the river to spend the night because it is getting dark. They build a fire in part to cook a fish that Nate has caught earlier in the day and to ward off dinosaurs in the night. They take turns standing watch. Talk around the fire is hard for Max because he is faced with the dilemma of whether or not to tell his Uncle Brady what he knows about Brady’s future. In Max’s future, Uncle Brady has already died. Will Max change the course of history if he tells Brady about his death and Brady then chooses a different path? For now, Max won’t tell Brady anything about the future.  In the morning, both groups, now one, take-off to find great great grandfather’s steamboat which should have a Recall Device on it. Otherwise, they are all trapped in the Cretaceous.

Anyone who has ever been out in the wild knows that anything can happen and often will happen. So it goes as Max, Petra, Nate, Brady and Mildred travel down river in the bass boat.  A herd of hadrosaurs begin to cross the river only to fall prey to the alligator-like deinosuchus in a feeding frenzy. Soon the bass boat and its occupants are being knocked around, when Max and Mildred get thrown from the boat. They make it to shore, but loose sight of the bass boat, which now has a damaged propeller, as well. The two groups each try to establish a plan to rejoin, but which group is further up river? If that isn’t bad enough, a T. rex shows up in Max and Mildred’s path. Max and Mildred are able to back away from the T. rex when a Deinosuchus distracts the T. rex.

Back on the river, Nate, Brady, and Petra come across a VW Beetle left in the Cretaceous on Max and Petra’s last trip there.  Night is falling, each group makes a bonfire to use to cook with, frighten away dinosaurs, and as a signal for the other group. Nate, Brady, and Petra will be walking in the morning because they have discovered a leak in the bass boat. It is now sinking.

Mildred’s true colors emerge after she and Max find the steamboat. On board the steamboat is “a prototype large-scale Recall Device”. (130) Mildred hits Max over the head with a piece of driftwood, then uses the Recall Device without him. Max finds a USB flash drive in the backpack he’s been carrying. It triggers a memory of the VW Beetle, which has a USB drive, and Max sets off to find the VW. He comes across an ankylosaur waving its club-like tail,  he skirts around  it only to find 2 Nanotyrannus. Just as Max gets out of their range, he runs SMACK into Brady, Nate, and Petra.

Back together again, Petra leads the way back to the VW Beetle, Max uses the USB flash drive, and finds directions to a Recall Device. Knowing where the Recall Device is doesn’t mean it will be easy to return back to the present. There are still T. rex to deal with and Nate’s injured leg is giving out, plus he has a fever. Finally, they make it to the Recall Device. When they activate it, it disappears without them.  A T. rex once again has them in its sights. “At that moment, there was a flash of light and a booming sound. In the middle of the creek bed, axle deep in water, a Hummer appeared and turned, blocking the giant theropod’s path. Grandpa Pierson’s Hummer.” (165) Kyle gets them into the Hummer and back to the present.

The story doesn’t end there because Nate needs to get to a hospital,  the T. rex is transported to the present along with the Hummer, there is an old letter from Mildred yet to be read, and one from Uncle Brady, as well.

There may just be another story brewing from great great grandpa Pierson’s Chronal Engine. Readers will just have to wait and see.