Pigsticks and Harold: Lost in Time by Alex Milway, 58 pp, RL 3

I adore Alex Milway's Pigsticks and Harold series and am so happy to have a fourth book to add to the shelves of my school library, where these books prove the perfect bridge from leveled readers to chapter books. With Milway's bright, boisterous illustrations and wonderfully mismatched characters, these books are hard not to love. 

With a long line of adventuring ancestors, Pigsticks is driven to explore. But, being somewhat self-involved and lacking in commonsense, he is fortunate to have his unwitting, Battenberg cake loving companion-for-hire Harold at his side. Harold's Battenberg cake that always gets these two out of a scrape, and in Lost in Time! cake has a very special role.

The Tuptown Science Fair was starting in an hour and Pigsticks, who happens to be the grand-nephew of Ada Lovepig, was still trying to get his spaceship ready to go. This comes in handy when Harold discovers him sitting on top of the Lovepig Time Machine. It takes some convincing, but talk of cake throughout the centuries finally convinces Harold to accompany Pigsticks on a trip through time. For this journey, Harold brings his, "Best-Ever Battenberg."


Of course nothing goes as planned! Dinopigs, Cleopigtra, the Great Fire of London and the delivery of the Statue of Liberty to the United States are stops along the crazy route these two take, stopping off in Ancient Rome where they bump into Julius Squealer (standing next to a flag bearing the letters PORQ rather than the SPQR) before settling in a Viking Village. Hamfrida, chief of the village, imprisons them immediately, telling them that she is going to burn their ship and banish them to the ice lands. Happily, Harold decides to sacrifice his Best-Ever Battenberg to Hamfrida, who swoons over it. "This cake is so pink, yet so yellow ... so moist and delicious ... IT'S THE FOOD OF THE GODS!" Hamfrida exclaims after her first bite!

The pair return to Tuptown, using Hamfrida's axe as a replacement for the rust level that sent them astray. However, Pigsticks makes a grave mistake and Harold and the time machine vanish for the last time... Don't worry, though! There is a happy ending - and new cake to love - for Pigsticks and Harold in Lost in Time!

Read my review of the first three books in this series:

Source: Review Copy





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