Eleven-year-old James Greenway (Chinese Australian/white) is heartbroken when his parents announce they’re divorcing. James has always considered his mom a bit rigid, and less fun to spend time with than his dad. But her new apartment is decorated in a surprisingly colorful style, she has interesting answers to questions he would normally ask his dad, and for the first time ever she’s going to enter the annual cake decorating contest at James’s school. James’s dad, by contrast, a curious, nerdy type who loves to make speculative models on the computer (e.g. what would happen if the Earth started spinning in the other direction?), seems a bit lost. When James’s classmate Yan tells him she knows how to time travel and gives him a brief demonstration, James, who can’t stop lamenting happy memories of his family in the past, asks her to send him back in time. Yan (Chinese) grows increasingly reluctant to help, not wanting to lose her new friend. Eventually, she offers to send him back to his six happiest memories so he can decide which time he’ll choose. As James revisits the past, however, he discovers life was never idyllic—for his parents or for him—even as he’s always been loved. A richly imagined, emotionally spot-on novel explores themes of family, friendship, and change, while dimensions of immigrant childhoods (James’s mom in the past and Yan in the present) are woven throughout. There is also a lot of cake!