Classroom Connections: THIS AGAIN? by Adam Borba

age range: 8-12 years
genre / topics: time travel / speculative fiction; anxiety
Adam Borba’s website

A charming new middle grade speculative fiction… both nostalgic and fresh. Its hopeful exuberance in the face of junior high angst is reminiscent of Judy Blume, its quirky high jinks evoke the works of Louis Sachar.
―School Library Journal

A time bending instant classic that will appeal to past, present, and future versions of every reader.
―David Soren, director of Captain Underpants: the First Epic Movie and writer/director of Turbo

[A] whip-smart comedy.
―Publisher’s Weekly

This ultra-clever adventure is perfectly in sync with both middle-school reality and middle-school fantasy. A charming story of real-life troubles careening down a time-travel bowling lane. Highly recommended!
―Trenton Lee Stewart, author of the award-winning and New York Times bestselling The Mysterious Benedict Society series and The Secret Keepers

Please tell us about your book.

THIS AGAIN follows the misadventures of Noah Nicholson, a kid attempting to orchestrate the perfect day with the help of his future self and a time machine. 

NOAH has plenty to be grateful for. He has solid grades and great friends; he’s finally becoming closer with Lucy Martinez—his crush since second grade—and he just might have a real shot at being elected class president next week. But despite all that, Noah fixates on the should’ve-beens and could’ve-beens and the belief that he can make his life perfect. Then Noah comes upon an opportunity to do just that.

At the local bowling alley, Noah runs into someone most unexpected: a boy who looks exactly like him. The look-alike is Noah from nine days in the future, and he insists that if Noah does every ridiculous thing he asks—from quacking like a duck in science class to painting himself green—they can achieve their dream of perfection. However, fate may have other plans, and Future Noah may not be entirely honest about what he’s up to. With so much on the line, can Noah trust…himself?

Ultimately, it’s a book about a kid wrestling with anxiety and perfectionism learning to accept that life doesn’t always go according to plan.

What inspired you to write this story?

I’ve spent my life navigating anxiety and trying to do too much—I figure this is a story I was born to write. ☺

Could you share with readers how you conducted your research?

A friend of mine is a theoretical physicist and professor at Brown. He spends his days thinking and lecturing about things like wormholes, string theory, and time travel. I had a blast picking his brain about how someone might create a time machine. Then I went down a few wormholes of my own as I became lost reading about time paradoxes.

How did you develop the character’s journey to resonate with young readers?

A couple of ways. First, theme is something that is critical to me. When I’m writing, one of the early goals I have is to get to a one sentence message. Something universal that each scene in the story builds to. Something that the protagonist will eventually learn that will allow them to grow and succeed at the end. Ideas like “Everyone belongs somewhere.” Or “Everyone is deserving of love.” Or “It’s okay to be different.” Or in this story, “No one can do everything.” So, hopefully, young readers can go on this fun ride, have a good time, and take away the same lessons that Noah, the protagonist learns, because the theme is universal—it’s a message that applies to everyone—but also, the theme is so baked into the story, that they’re one and the same. 

And secondly, while I believe there’s a way to make anything work in storytelling, for me, it’s easier to mix the real and the fantastical and form a bond with your readers if you limit yourself to just one or two magical “buys” and play everything else straight — especially how the characters react to the fantastical. Like in my first book, The Midnight Brigade, there’s a troll living under a bridge in Pittsburgh, but everything else is grounded. Or my second book, Outside Nowhere, a kid gets sent to a farm that grows magical radishes, but everything else in the story feels real. Here, in This Again, a kid makes a time machine out of a blender and an exercise bike, but everything else is grounded. The setting feels real. School. Family life. A crush. A desire to fit in. A dream to be popular. Navigating bumps with friends. All real, relatable issues and I lean into those. No place, and no one, is perfect, so highlighting difficulties and challenges makes people and places feel relatable and real. 

I think most young readers are going to feel like they know Noah—this kid who aspires to have it all. And a lot of them are going to feel like they are Noah. As always with fiction, it’s details, details, details that bring a story to life… but it tends to be problems, concerns, and hardships that make us feel for a character and fall in love with a story. What are the character’s hang ups? What’s troubling this kid both internally and externally. What’s their problem – why aren’t they “perfect.” And obviously, no one is, but this is a story about a kid who thinks he can achieve perfection. All that stuff draws you in and makes it feel real and relatable and makes an emotional connection. And as a bonus, it creates conflict and drama…which propels the story.

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?

This is a story about fate and free will. Teachers might ask what in our lives could be predetermined, and how much of it is tied to our own choices and actions.