Flashback Four #1: The Lincoln Project
by Dan Gutman · Flashback Four #1
A fast-moving time-travel adventure that drops four modern kids into the real texture of Gettysburg in 1863.
The story
Four 12-year-olds from very different Boston lives are recruited by a brilliant, ailing tech CEO to test an experimental time-travel device by photographing Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. What sounds like a simple camera run becomes an uneasy crash course in Civil War reality — a scarred farm, a chaotic presidential household, a jittery wartime town — forcing the team to use their wits (and a little mercy) to get home. Book one of a four-book series that pairs action with genuine historical homework.
Age verdict
Best 9-12. Confident 8-year-olds with I Survived experience will manage; younger than 8 is a stretch because of war imagery and a scene involving mistaken-identity arrest.
Our take
accessible historical adventure with strong cross-curricular hooks; kid appeal and teacher utility track together, with parent value slightly behind due to workmanlike prose and low re-read pull
What stands out
Each audience's top 3 dimensions. Out of 30 scored per book.
Kids love
- First-chapter grab Strong
The yellow-envelope mystery with twenty dollars and a summons to a mysterious Boston tower pulls four kids (and the reader) in within pages — stronger than The 39 Clues opening (7, inheritance-reveal setup) because it withholds the stakes just long enough to build curiosity; falls short of Holes (10, compact mystery layering) because the payoff arrives fast rather than deepening.
- New world unlocked Strong
Layering real Civil War texture (5,000 dead horses, unexploded ordnance, burial detail PTSD, the Wills house, Tad Lincoln's chaos) on top of accessible time-travel science genuinely expands a 9-12 reader's mental map — in the same tier as Number the Stars (8, historical immersion) and ahead of most series openers.
Parents love
- Real-world window Strong
Dense historical specificity — Gettysburg Address text, Everett's two-hour speech, battlefield casualty counts, ambrotype photography, the Wills house, slavery in a border state — delivers the non-fiction freight of Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever 1793 (8, period authenticity) and outpaces most series time-travel entries.
- Stereotype-breaker Strong
David's anxiety about being a Black kid in 1863 is taken seriously rather than waved off; Julia evolves beyond the rich-girl caricature; Lincoln is humanized rather than monument-ed — more thoughtful than The Magic Tree House (5, archetypes) and in the neighborhood of Brown Girl Dreaming (8, nuanced identity work).
Teachers love
- Reluctant reader rescue Strong
Short chapters, cliffhanger endings, fast hook, 700L Lexile, sports tie-in for basketball fans, and a bake-in of high-interest content (time travel, mystery) make this exactly the I Survived (8) tier of reluctant-reader bait.
- Cross-curricular value Strong
Naturally spans history (Civil War, Gettysburg Address, slavery), science (time-travel physics, ambrotype chemistry), and sports history (Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game) — matches Magic Tree House Fact Tracker pairings (7) and arrives already integrated inside a narrative.
✓ Perfect for
- • kids who loved I Survived and are ready for a longer narrative
- • reluctant readers who respond to mystery hooks and short chapters
- • history-curious 9-12 year-olds, especially those interested in the Civil War or the American presidency
- • sports fans (an early chapter dramatizes Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game)
- • classrooms pairing a narrative with a Gettysburg Address close-read
Not ideal for
sensitive younger readers who find brief battlefield imagery (a dead horse, a burial worker's account) or an execution-threat jail scene unsettling; readers seeking literary prose craft over plot-engine storytelling.
⚠ Heads up
At a glance
- Pages
- 240
- Chapters
- 21
- Words
- 62k
- Lexile
- 700L
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- POV
- Third Person Omniscient
- Illustration
- Sparse
- Published
- 2016
Mood & style
You'll know it worked when…
If a child enjoys the first four chapters (mystery invitation → arrival in Boston → first time-travel test), the rest of the book will hold them; the complications escalate rather than slow down.
More like this
Same genre, similar age range. Ranked by kid score.
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