The Time and Space of Uncle Albert - Hardcover

Russell Stannard is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University. He has travelled widely in Europe and the USA, researching high energy nuclear physics. He has received the Templeton UK project award and spent a year in America as a visiting fellow at the Center of Theological Theory, Princeton. He was awarded an OBE for services to physics and the popularisation of science. Married with four children of his own and three stepchildren, he vividly remembers the excitement of discovering Einstein's theories for the first time and he is dedicated to passing this inspiration on to new generations. The Time and Space of Uncle Albert was shortlisted for both the Science Award and the Whitbread Award, and his books have been translated into seventeen different languages.

Grade 4-6-- The point of this novel is not to engage readers in the lives of its characters, but to explain Einstein's theory of relativity. Uncle Albert and his niece Gedanken unravel and reveal abstract concepts through a computer and a spacecraft that allow her to travel in time and space. For the most part, the concepts do become comprehensible, but the device of a fictional framework supported by a contrived plot proves intrusive. The dialogue is plodding and talky, the characterization weighed down by cliches and repetitiousness. ( " That's stupid," Gedanken frequently responds to her kindly, eccentric, brilliant uncle.) The personification of the computer and the giggling light-beams do not give credence to the scientific demonstrations. Packaging a discussion of difficult-to-grasp scientific theory as fiction undermines both readers who want straightforward information and those who are after a good story. Necia Apfel's It's All Relative (Lothrop, 1985) is a more lucid entry to Einstein's theories. --Susan H. Patron, Los Angeles Public Library
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