To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment. Plenty of fun and great for history teachers as well. As always, this story has great potential to spark interest in a historical event while keeping young readers entertained and fascinated. The story continues with the suspense fans have come to expect in this entertaining and discreetly educational series, taking everyone into the cellar where the Romanovs were murdered and acting out several scenarios while playing with time. Fortunately it can, however, make Jonah, Katherine and Chip invisible, a function the kids immediately use after guards capture them when they arrive. They also discover, to their horror, that their Elucidator, the device that controls their movement through time, has been modified so that it cannot take them back to the present. Once they arrive in 1918, the kids learn that they have landed at the site of the Romanovs’ execution, to be carried out in the early hours of the next day. Time-travel criminals Gary and Hodge have escaped from time prison by tricking Daniella and Gavin, the modern-day versions of Anastasia and Alexis. Thirteen-year-old Jonah and his sister, 11-year-old Katherine, take an unplanned trip back in time to the house in Russia where the Romanovs were executed. The time-traveling middle schoolers are back for a trip to rescue Anastasia and Alexis Romanov from their 1918 murderers.

Haddix risked