Leapholes is one of those books with a lot of potential. But there's really two stories crammed into one and at times it feels like it's trying to do too much.

The first half of the book deals with Ryan Coolidge, a 14-year-old with a chip on his shoulder since his dad has been tossed into prison. Through a series of highly-unlikely events, Ryan himself gets put on trial in a super-secret world court (which apparently has a "speedy trial" clause in its charter). It is here he meets Hezekiah, a black version of Obi-wan / Gandalf / Dumbledore (or fill in the appropriate wise old mentor figure here). Hezekiah knows about "leapholes," which allow the holder to leap back in time to a legal case from history. To show off the leapholes, Hezekiah takes Ryan on a trip through some important cases, like Rosa Parks refusing to move from her seat on the bus, and a nineteenth-century case where survivors on an overloaded lifeboat were tossed off by lots because the boat would otherwise sink. Even with the odd circumstances that got us here, this is a great setup for learning about other important legal cases.

Except that's not where we go on this voyage. The second half of the book abruptly changes -- Ryan is still our main character leading us through the plot, but now the story seems less about him than about the circumstances surrounding slavery (essentially the months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Dred Scott). It's a good you-are-there story with our twenty-first century kid trying to figure out the 1850s, but the first half really hinted that we'd get to see several cases through these leapholes, and this is the only case we see. Sadly, it doesn't look like a series will be forthcoming.

Leapholes would make a decent read for a young adult who was interested in becoming a lawyer -- there are helpful discussion questions at the end, plus about thirty pages of short biographies of how "famous people" (some a bit more famous than others) decided they wanted to become lawyers. ( )

This book is very adventure some. It goes very many places. It is very excititing. ( )

http://hypothesized.blogspot.com/2006/07/leapholes.html ( )