A couple of weeks ago, I rescued a box of old books from the depths of my parents' attic. Alongside almost half of my Baby-sitters Club collection and classics like the Ramona books, I found a few odd single-titles. Of course, I couldn't wait to revisit these. The first one I picked up to re-read was Channel 10 from Nowhere (1985).
I remembered this as being a cool, kinda creepy book. I did not recall how super-short it is (62 pages) or that it was published as a Weekly Reader Book. The author, Lewis K. Parker, seems to have written mostly non-fiction for kids. However, this story definitely had me hooked back in the day.
Rachel is a normal 12-year-old girl who exhibits an interest in basketball and is lucky enough to have her own TV in her bedroom. One day her pesky little bro breaks off the knob—how quaint. So she calls a TV repair service from the phonebook and is promptly visited by two weird, maybe alien repair dudes. As they leave, they assure her that Channel 10 will come in nice and clearly. But Rachel's never gotten Channel 10 on her TV set. And it's not even listed in the TV guide.
So what's on Channel 10? SCENES FROM THE FUTURE! Rachel tunes in to some pretty innocuous stuff, like the dedication of a time capsule at her town's new post office. But it's not all Norman Rockwell hunky-dory information that's broadcast. And if she uses her knowledge of what she sees to change the course of history, Rachel could be in big trouble.
I think that I liked this little book because of how much fun it was to imagine what I would do if I were tuning in to Channel 10.
I also used to wish I could freeze time like the girl on Out of this World.
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