Running Out of Time

Wr. Peter Fox

Pub. Nosy Crow Age Range - 9-12 years

I can steal time.

The most I can take at the moment is fifteen seconds, which is not a lot. Grandmother took almost three minutes once and she told me she’s done more, but I never saw it.

She says there are stories of someone who can take all the time in the world, but how can that be right?

When Alex and his father are forced to flee their home to escape a brutal government, they begin a life-threatening journey across Europe. But when they are separated before they can reach Britain, Alex finds himself alone, with only his extraordinary gift to keep him alive.

"It's probably a true story many, many times over."

Quite a change of pace from the books I normally read. More guns than I'm used to. And someone said bloody. I was a bit like....ooo, hello....

There is a growing (and very welcome) market for books which expose the true plight of refugees, helping to explain to young readers a little of the world's dire political situation. The Boy at the Back of the Class and Boy, Everywhere spring immediately to mind, and some of these books (like Boy, Everywhere) handle the topic with insight and leave you changed in their wake.

Running Out of Time uses the unique conceit of sort-of time travel to tell its story, with two alternating timelines running through the course of the novel. It's executed perfectly, and gives younger a readers a narrative structure they perhaps won't have encountered before. I loved that about it. I also loved the unmistakably Quantum Leap-inspired graphic design, which on the proof amounts to just the lettering, but on the trade paperback consumes the entire cover. Glorious, and (obviously) very fitting.

But what I loved most of all was that the sort-of time travel element served the story without being the story. In the same way that we just accept that synthetic life exists in Troofriend, and that otherworldly flippery beings are just a staple in Eerie-on-Sea, Aleksander's family can set anchor points which allow them to live events, but return back if things go awry: like the restart points in a video game (or, to a lesser degree, the £1000 and £32,000 guarantee intervals in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). No explanation. You just have to accept it. It's one of the things I love most about Middle Grade literature.

Running Out of Time is a story about trust and hope, but most important of all it brings things out into the open that, because they're happening so far away, we tend to lose sight of. The uncomfortable truth about Running Out of Time is that (sort-of time travel aside) it's a true story. It's probably a true story many, many times over. There are countless children like Aleksander Sviatoslav. And, just as there is no explanation for Aleksander's gift, the book can offer no explanation for man's inhumanity to man. The boat-boarding scene in Chapter 28 ("After") is especially heart-wrenching. In the Afterword, the author plays down the fact that the book is about the lives of refugees. I think he's doing himself a disservice. This is very much a book about the lives of refugees, and it's one that tackles a challenging issue senstively and with real heart. It belongs in the classroom, not just because it's a super story, but also because it carries an important lesson along with it.

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teaching resources

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Yeah yeah, they're coming, sheesh.