Jodie and the Library card: Jodie Broom, #1

By julie Hodgson

Jodie Broom, a 12-year-old girl (almost 13!), is like most girls her age. She loves her friends, music, and is always up for a good adventure. What she treasures above all else are books and she is consumed by them, reading and collecting whatever she can to satisfy her voracious appetite for stories, facts, and history. But Jodie lives in the year 2075, and more than 50 years have passed since the banning of books and paper; it's a time when no one can own a printed book, or even print photographs. In this E-world, experiences are largely simulated, from the reconstituted food, to the zoo that only shows films of all the extinct species. With her student library card, which gives her the ability to time travel, Jodie discovers that she and her friends can experience historical events and meet legendary characters, and can also find and bring home her precious books to keep safe in her secret hiding place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chave AB
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393937005

julie Hodgson

I started writing poetry and short stories at the age of 9, a nice way to switch off I guess. Then it just escalated from there. My English teacher at my secondary school Mrs Love was an inspiration to me. In 1985 I moved to Tripoli in Libya, and as the schools did not have any books I started writing for the children of the local British schools. It's amazing that when there are no books you crave anything to read. So we all got together and made something out of nothing. I have continued writing for newspapers, The Times in Kuwait in 89 just before the first Gulf conflict, then, Libya, Sweden, Uk and lots of other countries. And the story could go on and on... I now live in Portugal and I have had many books published in the past and have joined publishers Opera Omnia and they published the first bilingual book back in November 2012. Many of my books are now in several languages.

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Best Day

7

Chapter 2: The Worst Day

13

Chapter 3: Worse Still!

19

Chapter 4: Monkey Business

26

Chapter 5: Otso Cold!

33

Chapter 6: Little Trouble in Big China 42

Chapter 7: The End of the World!

50

Chapter 8: Geniuses Don’t Make Mistakes 56

Chapter 9: Boom! Boom! Boom!

60

Chapter 10: Flower Power

67

Chapter 11: Water, Water Everywhere 73

Chapter 12: Home?

82

Chapter 13: Scrimples 86

Chapter 14: Jodie Back to Front

91

Chapter 15: Pacman and Scrimples Ahoy 94

Chapter 16: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

100

Chapter 17: Up, Up and Away!

106

Chapter 18: The Question

113

Chapter 19: The Answer

117

Chapter 20: Darkness

123

Chapter 21: Hot Chocolate

126

Chapter 22: Happily Ever After?

131

Chapter 23: Back and forth for hugs 136

CHAPTER 1

Th e Best Day

Jodie had that fi zzy, foamy feeling in her tummy, as if she had swallowed a chemistry set and it was now doing its own experiments inside of her. If any other moment in her life had been as exciting as this she couldn’t think of it.

She was here! She was actually here – the 25th of November 1984! Th is was the coolest date in the whole of time and she was sitting in it waiting for the musicians to arrive.

Just minutes before, she had been in stupid 2075. Th ey don’t even make new music in 2075. Th e closest thing is the beat sheet: a kind of fl at hat you place on your head that 7

J O D I E A N D T H E L I B R A R Y C A R D

pulsates in an odd rhythm and touches nerves to make your body move as if you’re dancing. It’s rubbish. But she didn’t have to worry about that now. She was at the Sarm West Studio in Notting Hill in 1984 and just about every single cool band from the eighties was about to arrive. It was the day they recorded Band Aid.

She had seen the video a hundred times on her iPad 50 and knew the background. A man called Bob Geldof, who was in a band called Th e Boomtown Rats, wanted to change the world and end poverty in Ethiopia. He had seen fi lms of children starving and dying of thirst and knew that there was enough money in the world to save them if he could just get people to give some of theirs. So he decided to record the song to raise money. Of course, this kind of thing has been done hundreds of times since, but this was the fi rst and no one seemed to know how important it was at the time, which is why Jodie was so excited to watch it all unfold.

She knew that all the musicians turned up in their old clothes, as if they were just popping to the shops, they each sung a bit of the song and then they were off . Th ere were even children there, which is why she didn’t have to worry about any kind of disguise. She could just blend in, wander around and everyone would think that she belonged to somebody else. Maybe she was the daughter of one of Spandau Ballet or U2 or Duran Duran, or Boy George’s or even George Michael’s little sister. Maybe she was a fourth, much smaller, red-headed member of Bananarama. She 8

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would work it out later, but for now she was just in the empty recording studio waiting for it to fi ll up with people with whom she could do her blending.

It was at 10.30 a.m. Recording started at eleven. She squished herself under the recording deck and waited. It was a gloomy place at that moment, with only stripes of modest November daylight fi nding their way in, but the room would soon be so bright with stars that she would need to wear shades. Th e anticipation was almost too much to bear, but all she could do now was wait.

As she waited, she pulled her library card out of her pocket, perhaps to pass the time or maybe because she could think of nothing else to do. It usually made her smile

– it was the key to limitless adventure and exploration –

but she couldn’t help frowning as she looked at it. Th ere were three problems. Firstly, she knew that she didn’t have much time left on it. All students at her school were only given fi ve hours’ time travel at a time and she was defi nitely close to her limit. Th ey were really only supposed to use the time for curriculum-based research, for example, tracing the family tree or seeing how people used to live in other times. Jodie had other ideas; she loved the 1980s and she loved books, both of which were frowned upon in her time.

In fact, books had been illegal since the 2020s. Th e second of her problems was the one-hour spring-back that all cards were fi tted with. She had timed her visit in such a way that she would defi nitely arrive before anyone else, but she would be pinged back to her own time before Band Aid had 9

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been completed. At least she got to see some of it, though.

Finally, and she hadn’t really noticed this before, her card was looking rather tatty. She had used it so much that it was starting to fray at the sides and bend in the middle.

She just hoped that it didn’t aff ect the way it worked. As she sat under the mixing desk turning the card over and over between her fi ngers, she realised that she had a fourth problem – Ms. Noble, the librarian. If she wanted more time, or to discuss the spring-back or even get a new card to replace the old one she would have to speak to Ms. Noble, and it was as plain as the great big nose on this grumpy lady’s face that she would rather eat a bee sandwich than help Jodie with anything. Jodie had no idea why, but Ms.

Noble had always disliked her and she made no secret of it.

She would shout and rage and wave her hands and cast her dark and menacing shadow over the twelve-year-old if she so much as spoke when she was not supposed to.

Th e thought of the woman made Jodie sweat a little and then she felt relief that she was several miles and ninety-one years away from her. She let a little smile grow on her face and the welcome buzz of excitement fi lled her up once again. In just minutes, Bob Geldof would open the doors followed by a whole generation of awesomeness.

Just enough time to look at the book that she had brought with her. She wanted to bring a book about Band Aid for all of the musicians to sign, but realised just in time that it wouldn’t have existed in 1984 and she would be giving herself away as a time traveller. So she brought a book about 10

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music from the early eighties, which had lots of pictures in it of the bands that she would see. She had picked it up in an old bookshop in 1994 along with a copy of Around the W

the or

W ld in 80 D

or

ays

ld in 80 D by Jules Verne, which she had read a million times (although she may have been exaggerating).

It was nice to be in a place where she could handle the book freely. Her book collection in 2075 had to be a secret.

She didn’t quite know what the punishment would be if she was caught with them, but she knew that it would be steep.

She understood why: books had been used in bio-warfare in the 2020s, the paper laced with biological weapons to assassinate world leaders, and had been illegal ever since.

Of course, everyone had an eReader, but it wasn’t the same as feeling and smelling the delicate age of a book, holding a story in your hand and enjoying it the way the author meant you too. It just wasn’t fair, which is why Jodie completely ignored the rule.

Th ere was suddenly a noise at the door and Jodie stuff ed the book back in her bag. It was the shuffl e of a key in the lock. Th ey were coming. All of her heroes from the eighties were coming. Th e best day of her life was just moments away. But then the best day of her life became the very worst day as she heard a giant ‘Piiiiiiinnnnnng!’ and just as she saw Bob Geldof’s foot step into the studio, her whole body was snatched into the air. It was as if she had travelled to 1984 on an elastic band and was now being catapulted back to her own time through the swirling vortex of