Running out of time

Hi, I'm Maureen. I have read a book called Running out of time. This book is about a girl named Jessie saving Clifton, a village she lives in. But Clifton is not a normal village. A millionaire named Clifton made this village with an evil scientist. And tourists can watch the village with secret cameras, but they actually made Clifton as an experiment. In Clifton, the children believe and the adults pretend that they are living in the 1800s. But actually, in the outside world, it is 1996. This might sound crazy, but they were all happy and they could even get medicine when they were sick. Then one day, the medicine stopped coming. But children began to get sick. So Jessie had to go get help from the outside world.

Her mother had instructed her to find Mr. Neeley. Jessie's mother told Jessie that Mr. Neeley would call the health department and a news conference. He didn't want Clifton village to be made. So Jessie called Mr. Neeley and he brought her to his house. Then he gave her some water to drink but Jessie poured it out the window. She thought that water in the outside world was poisonous because a man said so when she tried to drink water from a stream. That was a good choice, because the water was drugged. Mr. Neeley was actually dead and the evil scientist was pretending to be him! Jessie learned this because she heard Mr. Neeley saying this to some other person on the phone. She was terrified. But she didn't freak out and faint, like some other people would have done. She climbed out the window and escaped. But she learned that she could hold a news conference herself and that’s what she did. She saved everybody except for two children and now everyone is living like normal people.

After I read this book I thought about what I would do if I were Jessie. I think I might have done better than Jessie. I don’t trust people I don’t know. And I am much smarter. But Jessie was brave and she did well for somebody from the 1800s. This book was very exciting and funny. It made me think about what it would be like to live in a place like Clifton so I think that everybody should read this book.