this can be a great mystery and action packed book for young readers. great book that can really grab a child's attention.

More like 3.5 stars...
I know the late Gary Paulsen is best known for his wilderness survival tales, but I always liked his short, weird comedies. I loved "The Boy Who Owned the School" for example. "The Time Hackers" is a comedy, but this time with a sci-fi aesthetic. While it doesn't always land, it is a quick read and mostly fun.

Very interesting short read on time travel. My kids, ages 10 & 14, and I both enjoyed Dorso's adventures as his computer is hacked and takes him through time as the hackers engage in a game that could bring serious changes to the future's timeline.

Why why why is Gary Paulsen ruining books with inappropriate comments? This book talks about naked women in nearly every chapter. I can't recommend this book to my students because of it. It had nothing to to do with the plot so why did he feel the need to bring it up so often?! He did the same thing with Liar Liar, (erections and Amish jokes.)

I like it because it was interesting about the book while i was reading. In the beginning, it talks about a clock that they were looking for. Anybody would like to read this book if they want to.

February
The Time Hackers
Gary Paulsen

Dorso keeps getting pranked. A lot. He has discovered with his friend, Frank, that someone out there is violating the time paradox and messing with history. Scientists have theorized that it is impossible to go back in time and kill and ancestor of yours because then you wouldn't be alive to do so. Dorso is walking to school with Frank one day when everything flashes white and they find themselves on a pirate ship with people fighting. Then after a minute or two it happens again and they're back walking to school and only a fraction of a second has passed. Someone locked on to Dorso's computer and after this happening repeatedly (they went in the middle of a swamp, in an alleyway, in the middle of a desert, and more), they figure out two people have found out how to travel through time, space, and generate holograms wherever. They're playing a game where one is messing with history and the other is trying to stop him. In all of the times where Dorso and Frank are teleported, there is a laptop that controls it. Dorso and Frank manage to capture two laptops, so he has three (counting his own laptop that the "gamesters" have locked on to). Then they are teleported to a room where after talking to a voice from the speaker on the wall for a bit, they manage to escape and after running through many life-size holograms of Dorso's house (including his mom and his little sister)they arrive in a garage with a man on a laptop. Dorso goes to grab it, dropping the three he was holding, but the man falls back out of his chair with it. After saying thank you creepily, he vanishes and they are teleported back. Later, Dorso finds a note instructing him to push F1 WS on his laptop. When he does, Dorso is teleported to his front porch 200 years from now, where the man that vanished before is sitting on a park bench in the park next to the big oak tree that was where his house used to be. He says thank you for saving my life and explains everything from how he was an engineer who discovered how to travel through time and space and he kept it to himself but the two "gamesters" hacked his computer and found his address and took his laptop and computer chips to how the computer chips where the ones pranking Dorso because they needed something to do to warm up to be ready to travel through time and space. In return for saving his life and history, the man gives Dorso and Frank a treasure chest buried in Dorso's backyard containing around two million dollars worth of Confederate gold coins.

I think the theme of this book is perseverance. Not many other kids would've kept working try and save the history of the universe because it took a lot of courage and smarts. If they would've given up, who knows what the time hackers could've done. When on the pirate ship, other ships are shooting cannonballs at them and pirates are trying to kill Dorso and Frank, but they persevere to the end. They are hiding behind a desk when tons of arrows are shot at them and they persevere until the end. The theme of The Time Hackers was perseverance.

I really didn't like this book at all. I'm 9 and I think it wasn't appropriate for me. It was poorly written. My mom said he's a good writer, but this book was just a rip-off! But one thing I liked was that it really got me thinking about what would happen in the future.

I would normally not have picked this one up, but I read it to help Chris with his science fiction assignment for children's lit. I just HATE time travel so this one was destined to not be an enjoyable read. Paulsen is so great that it was actually tolerable. Young boys will just love it with all of the gross stuff going on.

Really fun story!

Not one of his best. Sci-fi selection but some good punch lines. Improbable but sensible tale.

Interesting concept!

Short, hilarious, and a perfect book to recommend to boys transitioning from J fiction