Finally reread this, a book I remembered loving as a 4th or 5th grader. Enjoyed it again this time, though many things were different than I remembered. I can see how I would have loved it then. I think it's a good read for upper-elementary age -- good character development, interesting historical detail and thought-provoking plot.

Charlotte has just started at boarding school. She goes to bed and wakes up and sees a different girl in the bed next to her. She realises she has travelled back 40 years and is in the place of Clare who has swapped places and travelled into Charlotte’s time. The story is told through Charlotte’s perspective as she lives Clare’s life in the First World War with Clare’s younger sister Emily. The two girls manage together in moving to lodgings, coping with the swap of Charlotte and Clare and working together to figure out how to get Clare back to her time and Charlotte back to hers.

The character of wilful Emily contrasts Charlotte, however it has been interesting to see how the characters have influenced each other and gaining a deeper understanding of Emily who comes across as tough and laughs things off, and takes the swap of her sister with Charlotte quite well throughout the story. The final chapters reveal the feelings Emily had for Charlotte through the letter and gifts she sends as an adult to Charlotte to remind her of their time together when Charlotte was Clare. The only aspect of the book that I disliked was discovering that Clare died 4 days after her return, which I found to be quite upsetting and wished that Farmer had explored Emily and Clare reuniting after the final swap.

This book has so many possibilities for use in the classroom. I would use this book with year 5/6 as I think it is a story that adds challenge as well as being manageable to read and understand. The rich language and style of writing would enhance children’s writing and extend their vocabularies. It is so well written, characters and settings have been described by Farmer in such a way that paints a picture in the readers mind with the rich language. The reader is really able to empathise with the characters and understand the struggle Charlotte has in keeping up with the time travel and living two lives at the start of the story as well as finding ways to reunite Emily with her sister and send Charlotte back to her time. I think it would be good to explore with children the perspective of Clare in the story as this was not explored by the author. Children could also be taught about letter writing using the examples in the text as well as creating an alternative ending. I think this story also has many opportunities for drama strategies to support writing as well as links to other subjects such as humanities.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book I thought it had a fantastic plot that was very well written and I hope to recommend it to others and use it within my classroom one day.

Oh, what a lovely book--it combines two things I love in young-people fiction: boarding school drama (especially British!) and time travel.

This slightly old-fashioned tale, written in 1969 with a protagonist who time travels from "present" time (1969, then) to 1918, started as a read-aloud to my girls. Alas, the story didn't quite take them in. I blame a busy schedule and inconsistent reading. Keeping tabs on two sets of characters at once (1969 and 1918) got confusing with too many days between readings.

Well, screw them. I wanted to keep reading the book, so I did. I would have adored this story as a girl. Farmer remains solidly within Charlotte's point of view, sensitive to all the anxieties a girl in Charlotte's shoes would have. Utterly believable. A couple things might need some explanation for current young readers, like shell shock, shooting for cowardice, anti-German sentiment, and Vespers and other boarding-school routines, but an older or more astute elementary school aged reader could piece these things together from the story. Enthusiastically recommended, even if my own daughters ditched it.

"and she thought uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that?"
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An MG book, Charlotte sometimes is the time-travel story of 13 year old Charlotte who is staying in a boarding school full of rules.
However, every other day, she wakes up as Clare in 1918 and lives that life.
The reader gets to share in her confusion and struggles as she maintained and defended her own sense of identity amidst her shifting timeline and life.
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It's quite a philosophical an MG book, and I liked some party of it. However, I found it slow and lacking in building suspense (probably because it's an MG read). I would've probably enjoyed it more 20 years ago or so.
Pleasantly surprised that there's a song made of it by the band The Cure. I listened and it's pretty good.
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A ⭐⭐. 5 rating for me

Like many, my only reference for this book was that song by The Cure, which I LOVE. Naturally, I had to know the story that inspired the masterpiece. Still, halfway through I just had to DNF it. This book is about a thirteen-year-old girl named Charlotte, who sleeps in her shabby bed on her first night at boarding school, only to wake up in the the same bed forty years ago; replacing a girl named Clare who looks just like her. She spends one day in 1958 and the next in 1918, being Charlotte sometimes and Clare at others. Although this story explores many intriguing themes—time-travel, identity struggle, isolation, war, death, etc.—it failed to keep me hooked. It doesn't come as a surprise; as an adult in 2021, the odds are you've seen and read far more captivating, intricate, (not to mention well-written) content of the sort. A children's novel published in 1969 is not very likely to blow you away. Regardless, the song remains close to my heart forever.

4.5 STARS

Penelope Farmer is an author who captured "the mysterious emotions of children, their uneasy relationships, and the sometimes terrifying awareness of their encompassing worlds." -- Ruth Hill Viguers, Horn Book.

"Charlotte Sometimes" is an intensely thoughtful, emotional story about Charlotte Makepeace, a young teenager attending boarding school in about 1950 in the English countryside. When she falls asleep in her new dormitory, in a strange bed with wheels, she awakens to find herself in the autumn of 1918, in the same dormitory, in the last months of WWI. She learns that she has traded places with someone called Clare Moby. As Clare and Charlotte sleep, they trade places, back and forth between the times. They are ostensibly so alike that no one notices they are not the same person. Clare thinks of keeping a journal so they can communicate with one another. She also urges Charlotte to be kind to Clare's younger sister, Emily. But Emily is keenly observant, and soon realizes that the "Clare" who sometimes awakens in the bed is not her sister Clare. Emily helps Charlotte make sense of the world in 1918, and they form a strong bond when, after the school dorms are used to house influenza victims, the Moby girls are sent to stay with the Chisel-Browns. Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown are coping (poorly, and in diverse ways) with the recent death of their son, who was killed on the front. Their spinster daughter Agnes, however, takes to Emily and Charlotte and helps make their time there more pleasant. Yet, being away from the dorm at the school means that Charlotte and Clare can no longer switch places. Charlotte goes from being Charlotte sometimes to being Clare all the time. Will Charlotte ever get back to her own time, and to being herself?

It is very difficult for me to write a review of this book. I loved so many things about it. It is written in such a thoughtful, engaging and lovely way. The prose is never too complex, but it does a fine job conveying a sense of atmosphere, era, and the essence of the characters. I especially appreciated Charlotte's introspective nature, her internal battle to remain Charlotte, to find courage, and to understand bravery. And her external battle to keep Emily happy, to be kind and good, and to understand the world she found herself so strangely thrust into.

I am not sure this is the sort of story that will appeal to many young readers these days, unfortunately. It is was, sadly, out of print but I understand it has recently been reprinted and I hope those readers, young and old, who seek a thoughtful and engaging story will seek it out. I think it might appeal to fans of L. M. Montgomery, who enjoy introspective heroines and this era in history.

This is apparently one of three books about Charlotte and her sister Emma in the "Avery Hall" series the other two being The Summer Birdsand Emma in Winter. I have not read the other books and do not feel my appreciation suffered in consequence. I think it could be read as a stand-alone.

Those looking for other thoughtful time-travel stories about a girl transported to an earlier time of war might also like The Root Cellar (Canadian girl, transported to the Civil War)

(January selection with Girls' School Story Group)

I enjoyed every single page. A story which plays the time-slip genre with great maturity. A story of a young girl finding her identity by losing it. The relationship between Charlotte and Emily was so intense. I'm really moved by the sense of change and loss.

Charlotte Makepeace is new to boarding school. She's an orphan raised by a strict grandfather and terribly nervous about starting school. Lessons are baffling and the other girls are not very kind. The best part is her new bed with wheels like wagon wheels near the window. Unfortunately that means Charlotte can hear the roar of jet planes overhead all night. When she awakens, it's very quiet and the view outside her window is different from what she had seen the night before. Then a strange girl she's never seen keeps calling Charlotte by the wrong name. Who is Clare? The young girl seems to think Charlotte is her sister Clare! What's even more curious is that Charlotte seems to have switched places with Clare who lived way back in 1918 - 40 years ago! Each day Charlotte and Clare switch places. It gets more and more confusing trying to keep up with lessons in two time periods, not really able to make any new friends. Charlotte does bond with Emily, Claire's little sister, but when the Moby sisters are to be sent to lodgings, Charlotte fears being stuck in 1918 forever. Can she find a way to get back to her own time before she forgets who she is?

I didn't really care for this story very much. Boarding school sounds like a horrid place, especially in 1918 when it appears to have been more religious and severe. I didn't quite understand if this was specifically a church school originally or not. It didn't say. It sounds like the next worst thing to Catholic school as my dad describes it. The girls were horrid and Charlotte and Clare are THE most unappealing characters. I enjoyed the time travel aspect and kept turning pages to find out whether Charlotte figured out how to get back. I wished half the book was from Clare's point-of-view to see what life in the 1960s looks like from the perspective of someone from WWI. The wartime details were really great. The author painted a grim picture of life in WWI England. At first I assumed it was WWII given blackouts, air raids and rationing. I was surprised to learn all those things happened first in the previous war. I especially appreciated the depiction of a young man desperate to be a soldier and not being able to finish what he started. That was desperately sad.

I wanted to smack Charlotte and Clare both. Charlotte is possibly worse. She's whiny and not a proactive person. She wants to go home but does nothing about it. She starts writing to Clare to learn more about what she's going through and then drops the girl like a hot potato. Charlotte doesn't try to learn from Clare or brainstorm ideas of how to switch back permanently. Clare is more pious and boring, according to her sister Emily. Emily is so much fun! She's spunky, bold, brave and not a girly girl. Unfortunately she's this way because her father wanted a boy but it makes Emily a more appealing character and I would have really liked this book if Emily were the main character. She's a bit boring but I think she could loosen up away from school. Bunty, Emily's friend, is horrid. She's Mean Girl Lite. Teasing Elsie for being half German is simply cruel and uncalled for. The girl is awkward enough and she doesn't need to be bullied for her heritage. In Charlotte's time the other girls in her dorm are mean girls. I loathe hazing and bullying. The only minor character I like is Elizabeth, in Charlotte's time. She's smart, curious and detail-oriented. Sarah is OK when she remembers to be nice to Charlotte.

The Chisel-Browns are super creepy. That kind of hero worship of one's son is unhealthy and their bullying him to be tough didn't do anything but get him killed. Agnes is sweet even though her development has been arrested by her creepy parents. I hope she finds a nice bachelor to take her off their hands. She needs to escape! Emily is rather unkind to them but she's only 10 and doesn't really have the maturity to be understanding and empathetic of what their loss means to them. Of course she only sees the elderly people as cruel, weird and creepy.

This story didn't appeal to me as an adult and as a kid it would have been too recent in time for me to pick it up. I'm sure that's why I never read it. It seems funny to think 1918 is closer to Charlotte's time than her time is to ours!

I read the first part of this book as a child but I never finished it – funny that I finished it now, in my 40s. It seems appropriate, given its time travel themes.

This was always one of my favorite books from my childhood.

http://geeamekarvis.wordpress.com/201...

Sometimes I am Charlotte Sometimes
And I know my own face and hair
Sometimes I don’t know who I am
And how I managed to get here
When I am here I think I know
That I am the same old me
That I was yesterday
The same me in the mirror I see
But then again I end up there
In another place and time
And I can’t make out
If the fingers and hair are mine
As I go in and out of my dreams and not-dreams
I am two people and sometimes just one
Is it me who changes or those around?
Or everything just keeps shifting under the Sun?
- Geetanjali

Reread. I last read this when I was much younger, and mostly what I remember is that I found it unsettling and strange. For once, my memory is accurate. This is nominally a time travel story, but perhaps because of time’s inexorable march, the English girls’ boarding school in the “modern” ’50s doesn’t seem all that different to someone reading in 2008 (or 199-whatever) from the English girls’ boarding school in the “past” of 1918. Yes, there’s a war going on in the latter, and that ends up playing a significant role in the story, but still, Charlotte’s present is so thinly sketched out that there almost might as well be one happening there as well. Charlotte, too, seems thin, barely there, so when she starts to feel like she’s losing herself in the identity of Clare, the girl she’s replaced in the past, the unease one feels is more that she never existed in the first place.

Maybe I’ll try again in another ten years, but I’m still not sure if I’ll know what to make of this book.