Mitch is a boy who’s just left his hometown of Durham to enrol into a new school in the town of Fairview for grade six. Mitch’s father moved the family onto his grandfather’s farm, which represented another significant transition for the boy, who was expected to do chores. The reader is never certain where Fairview actually is in Storms and Scarabs, but it’s possibly in the United States, where drinking laws are above the age of 21. But the stress the boy felt about moving to a new home in a strange town was never ambiguous in this novel by H.R. Hobbs. If any reader had ever suffered the anxiety of moving to a new school to start again, they can relate to Mitch’s initial struggles, as he adjusted to life in Fairview.
But Fairview is just an ancillary setting, as much of the story in Storms and Scarabs happened in ancient Egypt, with illustrative descriptions of the sights, sounds, tastes and traditions a time traveller might confront if they were dropped into the age of the Pharaohs.
After his family moved to the farm outside of Fairview, Mitch decided to explore the loft, where he also found his great grandfather’s journal. Soon after, Mitch and his new friend, Brock uncovered the time travelling spyglass inside a locked trunk. The boys discovered the spyglass in the attic of the farmhouse – an area once forbidden to Mitch while his grandfather was alive.
Stories of travelling through time had been popular since H.G. Well’s story, The Time Machine, in 1895. Mitch and Brock don’t have a time machine, but they were brought into ancient Egypt by turning and aligning the symbols etched onto the spyglass the young protagonist’s great grandfather had purchased in the Hague during the era of the First World War.
H.R. Hobbs is skilled at using tension in this plot-driven tale, where the boys gradually exposed a mystery regarding Mitch’s great grandfather. At times, Mitch and Brock’s investigative efforts are thwarted by Mitch’s father, who wished his son was more interested in tending to family’s new pigs than combing the attic for mysteries. The reader sympathized with Mitch, because it was possible to catch teasing hints of an adventure waiting around the corner.
When the boys arrive in the Land of the Pharaohs, they meet up with Jabari, who knew Mitch’s great grandfather. Like Mitch and Brock, Great Grandfather Howell was also stranded for a time in ancient Egypt after playing around with the spyglass. The boys also encountered Ammon – a priest with evil intentions.
So, the boys are marooned in ancient Egypt – they must find a way to get back home. Again, the author puts conflictual methods to good use in the novel, as she portrayed the initial hopelessness experienced by the boys with a realistic sense, despite this being a fantastical story. Indeed, Mitch’s and Brock’s escape back to modern times appeared to be an insurmountable challenge in Storms and Scarabs. In the meantime, the depiction of ancient Egypt as given by H.R. Hobbs represented a fantastic and enthralling world based on historic research.
