The stories listed here can be either fantasy or sci-fi and often contain a mixture of both. Some of them involve the use of time machines for the time travel, but most of them are more like time slips – the time travel is less intentional, more magical, often centered around a special place or object.
Among the stories which have some supernatural or psychic themes, some of them have elements of ghost stories, with descendants of certain people or new occupants of their homes seeing them in the past, although some of them are centered more around the memories of living people showing themselves to younger people in order to help resolve some unresolved situations or feelings from the past.
Individual Books
Visions of the Past
In these books, characters may or may not actually travel to the past themselves, but they at least have visions of the past, possibly through someone else’s eyes.
Young Tommy Bassumtyte, an orphan, goes to live with a distant cousin of the same name in England. His resemblance to a distant ancestor of theirs helps him to travel through time, see into the past, and solve the mystery of a missing treasure.
When Alison and her father travel from Canada to Wales in order to see the house that they’ve inherited from a distant relative, Alison finds herself caught up in a ghostly mystery from the past. Somehow, she must prevent another young girl from making the worst mistake of her life while considering the choices she is making in her own life.
When Sally goes to stay with an aunt she’s never met before, she finds a portrait of a young girl who looks very much like her wearing old-fashioned clothes and holding a doll. This young girl, also named Sally, used to live in her aunt’s house many years ago, and Sally begins to have visions of her life there and how she lost her beloved doll, Elizabeth, who is a little bit magic and is still in the house, waiting to be found. Part mystery, part fantasy.
A Pattern of Roses (1972, 1975)
A boy whose parents are renovating an old cottage in England begins learning about the history of the house and another boy who once lived there and died under mysterious circumstances years ago. As he investigates the mystery, he finds that events from this past boy’s life are strangely also beginning to happen to him as well. The US edition of this British book is called So Once Was I. By K. M. Peyton.
A Stitch in Time (1976)
A modern girl, Maria, makes a connection with a girl from the Victorian era, Harriet, who used to live in the house that her family has rented during the summer. Maria is an imaginative girl, who isn’t sure at first if she’s just imagining it when she seems to hear things from the past of this house that no one else hears, like a dog barking (when there’s no dog around), a swing creaking (when there is no swing outside in the present), and piano music in the parlor (which no one is playing). When Maria finds Harriet’s old sampler, her connection to Harriet grows, and Maria senses that Harriet may have suffered a tragedy in the distant past, eventually learning that the tragedy isn’t quite what she thought it was. By Penelope Lively.
A String in the Harp (1976)
An American boy who has recently moved to Wales with his family finds a magic tuning key that once belonged to the legendary bard Taliesin that gives him and his family visions of the distant past. By Nancy Bond.
The Time of the Ghost (1981)
The ghost of a teenage girl struggles to remember who she is and how she died. At first, all she knows is that she is one of four sisters (she’s not completely sure which one) who live at a boarding school owned by their parents and that she was in a terrible accident of some kind. It turns out that her spirit has traveled back in time several years to her youth, when she did something that set up her accident later … and her “accident” wasn’t really an accident. Does she still have time to change things and save her own life? By Diana Wynne Jones.
Twin Spell (1968)
A pair of twins buy an antique doll that gives them visions of the past, unlocking a family tragedy and setting a ghost at rest. Also printed under the title Double Spell. By Janet Lunn.
When Marnie Was There (1967)
A lonely foster girl, Anna, is sent to the countryside by her foster family when she becomes ill. Part of her illness is emotional. Because she is a foster child, Anna feels different from other children and finds it difficult to form relationships with other people, doubting whether her foster parents really love her. However, when Anna sees a mysterious old house that seems strangely familiar to her, she meets a strange girl named Marnie. Marnie is odd, but Anna feels drawn to her, and the two of them bond. When Marnie mysteriously disappears and Anna learns the secrets of her life, Anna also learns the secrets of her own past, how she came to be a foster child, and how to accept the love of her foster family. By Joan G. Robinson.
Time Slips
A character goes travels through time without really understanding how or why or being able to control it.
Charlotte Sometimes (1969)
A young girl, Charlotte, is sent away to boarding school, but as she tries to become used to her life there, she discovers that, every time she goes to sleep in her boarding school bed, she trades places with another girl, Clare, who attended that same boarding school in the past, in 1918, and slept in the same bed. Charlotte struggles through days in the past with the help of Clare’s sister, Emily, not knowing quite why this is happening and worried about losing her own identity as she crosses back and forth between time periods. By Penelope Farmer.
Fog Magic (1943)
A young girl goes back in time whenever the area where she lives is covered in fog.
Jessamy (1967)
Jessamy is an orphan girl whose care is shared between two aunts, who take care of her but don’t really pay that much attention to her. When her cousins catch whooping cough, the aunt who was supposed to take Jessamy during her school holidays instead sends her to stay with Miss Brindle, who is the caretaker of an old Victorian mansion. Jessamy is allowed to explore the old mansion, and in the old school room, she is sent back in time to the beginning of World War I.
The Magic Half (2009)
Miri is the only child in her family without a twin and often feels left out. However, the house that her family has moved into is magic, and it enables her to travel back in time to 1935, where she meets a girl who could be the twin that she’s always wanted and who desperately needs a new home. By Annie Barrows.
Mirror of Danger (1973, 1974)
Orphaned Lucy goes to live with her cousins at Christmas and is befriended by a Victorian ghost with malevolent intentions. Alternate title: Come Back, Lucy. By Pamela Sykes.
The daughter of an Elizabethan nobleman suddenly finds herself on a farm in 20th century Iowa. By Jane Resh Thomas.
Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958)
Tom is spending the summer with his aunt and uncle. He is lonely at first, but he discovers that when the clock chimes thirteen times at night, he can go back in time, where he befriends an equally lonely girl named Hatty. By Phillipa Pearce.
Audrey and her younger brother Nathan are having a picnic when they accidentally unearth an old pocket watch that transports them back in time to the Revolutionary War. By Ruth Chew.
A Traveller in Time (1939)
A young English girl from the 1930s travels back in time to befriend people who are trying to rescue Mary Queen of Scots. By Alison Uttley.
Voices After Midnight (1989)
A set of siblings staying in an old house in New York City find themselves traveling back in time to stop a tragedy.
Magic Time Travel
In these books, characters know that they’re traveling through time because of magic involving a magic spell or magical object.
Bed-Knob and Broomstick (1943, 1947)
The combined edition of The Magic Bed-Knob and its sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks. Together, these two books were the basis for the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Siblings spend the summer with a woman who is an amateur witch, who gives them a magic bed knob which allows them to travel to other places and other times on their bed. By Mary Norton.
The Box of Delights (1935)
The sequel to The Midnight Folk. A Christmas story. Kay Harker struggles to protect a magical box which can grant its owner special powers and the ability to travel through time. By John Masefield.
The Case of the Dragon in Distress (1991)
The McGurk Organization goes back in time to the Middle Ages when they use some mysterious walkie-talkies that they got used.
The Case of the Weeping Witch (1992)
The McGurk Organization goes back in time to Colonial America to save a young girl being tried for witchcraft
Mazemaker (1989)
A girl accidentally goes back in time through a mysterious maze and must solve the mystery of the maze’s original maker in order to return to her own time. By Catherine Dexter.
Moon Window (1996)
Jo is trying to adjust to her mother’s remarriage when a visit to a distant relative at their old family home shows her a magic window that allows her to travel back in time. By Jane Louise Curry.
The Story of the Amulet (1906)
A set of siblings purchase a magic amulet but learn that they must travel back in time to find its missing half. Sequel to The Phoenix and the Carpet. This book is public domain and is available on Project Gutenberg. By E. Nesbit.
A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)
A brother and sister travel back in time to Medieval Germany to save a good man who has been turned into a werewolf by an evil sorcerer. By Mary Stewart.
The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House (1968)
Neighborhood mean girl Maureen is fascinated by an abandoned house where the wealthy Messerman family once lived. One day, she sneaks inside to look around and meets a leprechaun, who tells her the secret of the mysterious Messerman girls who disappeared many years ago. However, when Maureen crosses them by stealing a bracelet, she becomes trapped in the past with them. Also known as The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden. By Mary Chase.
Series
This is a very loose trilogy that takes place mainly in Canada, at a place called Hawthorn Bay on Lake Ontario, at various periods in history. It’s partly an historical series and partly fantasy because some of it involves fantasy elements like ESP and time travel. Time travel particularly applies to the first book the series, The Root Cellar. By Janet Lunn.
A boy brings toy plastic figures to life by locking them in an old cupboard with a special key. 1980-1998.
This short series of time travel stories is about children who reach out of their own time periods to touch others living in the past and in the future in order to change their world for the better. The series centers on themes of climate change and war and how we respond to changes in the world around us.
Kat is a young girl who goes on time travel adventures with her aunt using a time machine they inherited from a distant relative. They meet famous people in history and often have an impact on historical events. The sections in the back give more information about the time periods they visit in each book.
Magic Attic Club
A group of girls discover that if they put on clothes found in a friend’s attic and look in the attic mirror, it will send them to other times and places, where they have magical adventures. By various authors. 1995-2002.
Jack and Annie discover an old tree house in the woods that is filled with books and can take them to different periods of time. By Mary Pope Osborne. 1992-Present.
Various groups of children go on magical adventures. A somewhat loose series that follows different sets of characters, although some of the events are related. Not all of the books focus on or particularly involve time travel, but there are elements of it in various stories. The one book that really focuses on time travel is The Time Garden. By Edward Eager.
On her thirteenth birthday, Sarah Collins discovers that she is actually a witch and can use magic. In the third book in the series, Gone With the Witch, she transports herself and a friend back in time to the Civil War.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 