The Crystal Navigator: A Perilous Journey Back Through Time

Lucy Nightingale #1

by Nancy Kunhardt Lodge, Evi Gstottner (Illustrations)

The Crystal Navigator is a middle grade fantasy in the classic tradition of The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland that celebrates the power of imagination. Eleven year old Lucy Nightingale is a special little girl. She can make things with her thoughts. However, she lost her confidence when her mind went blank during an oral report. Then a dazzling new teacher assigns another report about five paintings. Convinced that the only way to get an A on this assignment is to actually talk to the artists, Lucy summons a Wise One to help her with time travel. Her Wise One shows up in the form of a loveable, well-spoken, befuddled Corgi named Wilbur. Lucy and Wilbur fly back to fifteenth-century Florence. The journey turns perilous when the Navigator contracts a virus and propels the two friends into the wrong time. In triumphing over the obstacles Wilbur sets in her way, Lucy finds her self-confidence and more. The book will thrill and educate young readers about the value of viewing life as a journey and the magic that lives inside each of us.

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2014

About the author

Nancy Kunhardt Lodge has a Masters Degree in Classics and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Art History.
My middle grade Lucy Nightingale Adventure fantasy sci/fi series include The Crystal Navigator,2014, Mona Lisa's Ghost, 2017, and The Gravity Thief, 2020. My aim is to inspire children to love art while encouraging their imaginations by weaving together art, science, fantasy, and themes of self-esteem. Kirkus Review wrote: "...The Crystal Navigator, ...Throughout this entertaining, fantastical debut, the author brings the artists and their paintings to life with resonant, informed vignettes." and "...A vividly written work of juvenile fiction that mixes fantasy and suspense with messages of empowerment, history, art, and science."

I have taught Art History at Universities in Boston and Washington, DC., written scholarly articles, and delivered papers at Renaissance conferences in Italy and the U.S.. The Crystal Navigator won a silver Mom's Choice Award, recommended by the American Educational Association, and is on school reading lists in MD. MA.and DC. Mona Lisa's Ghost won an Eric Hoffer Book Award and received a Gold Mom's Choice Award. Madrid publisher Editorial Kolima published both books.

My second book, Mona Lisa's Ghost is a mystery that weaves science, art history, reincarnation, time travel into one big adventure. When scientists at the Louvre Museum decide to measure the paint layers of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa using a Spectrographic Scanner, the scanner set off a ghastly, molecule –destroying syndrome called zoom seizure. During a class video Lucy Nightingale and her best friend, Sam Winter see the results: Lisa is crying and a purple storm rages through the landscape. Lucy’s parents take her to Paris for winter and Sam solve a mystery that would stun the world and change the face of Quantum Physics forever if it were made public. The Gravity Thief: minutes after four-year-old Peter climbs out of his world inside Vermeer’s Music Lesson, thieves rip the painting off the wall and disappear into the night. Marooned in the strange atmosphere of a dark museum gallery, Peter will die unless someone doesn’t return the painting. Lucy discovers that returning Peter to his only person who can help him is Lucy Nightingale. She is destined to save Peter.
Lucy and her brainy friend Sam Winter work out that the thief wanted the painting for a chaos-creating machine.

Reviews

[John Naylor]

I received this book for free via Goodreads First Reads.

I really enjoyed the book from cover to cover. I am not in the targeted audience but it is a good solid and educational story. Children will not even realise they are learning because of the good story and the beautiful illustrations.

The author has a gift of painting like the people mentioned in the book but she paints with words and colours rather than oils. I like the style of the book and I think the amount of pages in it is just about right for the story too. I would recommend it to any parent of a 6-8 year old to read to them and for the 9-11 year olds to read alone.

A wonderful little book and one I will look out for any sequels.

[Kailey (Luminous Libro)]

After ruining her oral presentation at school, Lucy has lost her confidence. She wishes that a Wise One would come to help her complete her newest school project, researching five great artists of the past. Wilbur, a little Corgi dog, whisks her away to the past to visit the artists themselves and see them paint. But Lucy is worried that Wilbur is getting sick during their journey, and the worse he gets, his connection to the Crystal Navigator causes them to veer off course. Unless Lucy can heal Wilbur and repair the Navigator, they could be lost in the past forever.

I liked the main ideas behind this story; the time travel, the artists, the mystical crystals, the way that Lucy's thoughts can create their own powerful magic. There is lots of potential in this story, but the writing style is very dry. There are numerous grammatical errors, punctuation and capitalization errors, and that made it difficult to read. The spelling is decent though, so I'm grateful for small blessings.

I would think that a book about time travel would take the trouble to be historically accurate, but this book barely even tries. One of the major plot points is that there is "banana pudding" in fifteenth-century Florence, Italy.
Seriously? What Americans think of as "pudding" (a type of custard dessert) wasn't even invented until about 1840. And you know they weren't serving the Southern-American classic Banana Pudding back in Renaissance Italy. Banana Pudding is practically sacred in the Deep South, so how do you think they managed to get Nilla Wafers in downtown Florence back in the old days? Because I KNOW you weren't trying to make it without the Nillas! That's just wrong! (I'm from Georgia, and I know what I'm talking about here.)

When Lucy and Wilbur travel back to old Italy, they can understand every person they meet, without needed to translate. That's fine, because I figured, it's the magic of the Crystal Navigator that causes them to understand languages. All part of the fantasy. All part of the magic.
But then, they meet Hannibal crossing the Alps, and suddenly Lucy can't understand what he is saying, and needs Wilbur to translate. Did I miss something here? Suddenly, the magic is gone? Then it comes back again in the next scene? Inconsistent magic systems are one of my pet peeves. If you're going to create a world with magic, make it consistent. It has to make sense in every scene.

There were many times when the writing was confusing, and did not explain things satisfactorily. For instance, at most places that Lucy and Wilbur visit, Wilbur sits down in a corner with a book to read. The books all have cutesy titles. But it is never explained WHERE he gets the book from. Did he get the book from the artist's library? Did he find it on the floor? Did he pull it out of his magic pockets? Why isn't that explained? Maybe it's supposed to be mysterious or something, I don't know.

One time when Wilbur is thrown into jail, Lucy comes to rescue him, and he says something like, "Can we wait a minute? I just ordered tea." Is that a joke? Did he actually order tea? He's a dog, so how did he order tea, when he has been pretending to be a normal pet? Who would take an order of tea from a talking dog in Renaissance Italy? I DON'T KNOW! This is idiotic. Why is this never explained?


The plot is really obvious. The characters are flat. I'm disappointed in this book. Lazy writing.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher/author in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.

[Robin Chambers]

This book rang bells for me immediately. It was about bright children, as my books are. It wasn’t afraid to use interesting phrases like “chromatic aberration” and “inordinately fast synapses firing simultaneously”) and literary references such as ‘Den Vinter Svampe’ and ‘The Steady Gaze of Tawosret’s Mummy’. It took magical and unusual events in its stride, and was beautifully written in an uncluttered way. I felt a spooky affinity with the writer…

I’m always happy to revisit Wonderland, and if Lewis Carroll can be allowed a talking white rabbit, Nancy Lodge must certainly be allowed a dignified corgi named Wilbur. Wilbur is not impressed with wizards of the flowing beard/knobbly stick and pointy hat variety because “you have to jump through funnels to get near their zip code.” Fair enough…

Lucy is on a quest to rediscover her confidence. She strives so hard for perfection in all things that the slightest mishap en route to it can derail her. Getting an ‘A’ is all that matters. Wilbur has chosen his current shape to challenge her rigid assumptions. She has jumped on to the red path, which may not be all that far from the yellow brick road… “You have so much to learn” he tells her, at which point Lucy sighs with relief. “That’s okay… I like learning.” Yes yes YES.

Poetic description abounds. Lucy’s feet sink into “night-soaked” grass. The air has “diamond brilliance”. And how about this for a sentence: “It was as if every part of her was giggling, especially her heart.”?

Wilbur comes from the planet Wilwahren (= ‘seeks to safeguard’) and has done amazing things: he has rescued poor parallelograms from the beastly blabbermouths (somewhere no doubt quite close to where the borogroves were mimsy, and the mome raths outgrabe). He has even sewn up a black hole or two.

He takes her back to the Renaissance and to other centuries to meet great painters and discuss their work with them. He warns her about never ever using an anomaly when out of her own time-zone, and patiently explains what an ‘anomaly’ is. The painters reveal the special significance of many details in their paintings: reminding us how rewarding it can be to take a detailed look.

Lucy regularly reminds me of Alice. When Wilbur tells her not to worry about him so much but instead to “appreciate the here and now” she replies “I am! I can appreciate more than one thing at a time, you know.”

When the Navigator malfunctions they find themselves in other seminal times and spaces. This is history, geography and psychology, swallowed with liberal doses of delightful nonsense. Human reality, after all, is largely a figment of human imagination. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the language spoken on Saturn’s sixty seventh moon has no metaphors or past participles.

This book will broaden children’s minds, increase their vocabularies and teach their imaginations to fly. It is most definitely my kind of book.

[Franca Pelaccia]

The Crystal Navigator by Nancy Kunhardt Lodge is the story about eleven year old Lucy Nightingale. During a class presentation, Lucy blanks out and faints. Humiliated, Lucy resolves to redeem herself by getting an “A” on her next oral presentation. Her next presentation, however, is a challenge. She needs to find out what Botticelli’s Primavera, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, Jacopo Pontormo’s Four Women and Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night tell her about the personality of the artists. In order to get that “A” and recover her floundering confidence, Lucy wants firsthand information. She wants it from the artists themselves. Through crystals, wavelengths, friendship, wishing, hoping, belief and some magic she contacts a Wise One who turns out to a Corgi named Wilbur. Using a crystal navigator Wilbur takes her back in time to meet the artists and get the answers for her assignment. The artists turn out to be people with their own issues, quirks, conflicts, or doubts. Lucy gets the answers but through the artists and Wilbur she also gains self-confidence and can face her class and present her assignment.
The Crystal Navigator is a middle grade fantasy along the same lines as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. Just like Dorothy and Alice, Lucy sets off on a wild and fantastical journey where she encounters truths about people, objects or animals in order to bolster her confidence. She returns to the real world reborn and enlightened. The novel is therefore not just for middle graders but appropriate for any reader who enjoys allegorical stories. It is also a fun introduction to art history. It brings to life five master painters, their culture and time, and the meanings or background of their paintings. Da Vinci’s Lisa might have been a fun-loving teenager with lots of attitude but learning that Jacopo Pontormo was a recluse who only ate boiled eggs was very interesting.
The Crystal Navigator is not long but it packs a big punch and makes the reader want to wish upon a star again.
Reviewed for Bookpleasures.com

[Karen Hall]

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The Crystal Navigator
BY NANCY KUNHARDT LODGE
Eleven year old Lucy's mind goes blank during an oral report, knocking her confidence. She becomes convinced that it's no more A grades for her, and it will all be downhill from here. Then teacher sets a new assignment, a report about great paintings. Lucy, who can summon things with her thoughts, comes up with a plan to set her grades back on track. She should visit the artists themselves, get their points of view, and come back with a report like no other...
This time travel book is a genuine original. Instead of simply hopping around time zones to have adventures in medieval or Victorian or Roman themes, we have the innovative idea of focussing on famous artists and their paintings. It's a story idea that really took me by surprise, and this originality really swept me up. It stirred up a curiosity in me to see exactly where (and when) the story would go.
I found all of the characters to be believable. Lucy is very much the hard-working schoolgirl with confidence issues, and Wilbur the spectacle-wearing Corgi is simply great! It's lots of fun to meet da Vinci and an amusing take on Lisa. Michelangelo, van Gogh and more will be met within these pages, and they are all vibrant enough to bring history to life.
This is the kind of story that can really spark children's imaginations, and allow themselves to be carried along on Lucy's journey. All kids must wish for a way to make school assignments more interesting, and what could be better than following the Navigator through time? It will give children a real feeling of living history, and that there's a story behind every painting, a reason for its existence. Nancy's expertise is evident in every chapter of the Crystal Navigator. You feel this is written by someone who cares for their subjects, and wishes to present them in the best possible light.
​An excellent book for adventurous readers of eleven years up, and one that could very well be the launchpad for a love of art. Nancy states that she 'wanted to make art and artists come alive for children, to engage them in what Lucy was feeling when she her mind went blank during her oral report, how she felt flying through the star-crowded night back to fifteenth-century Florence, or what it was like to jump into a painting onto flower-strewn meadow of Botticelli's Primavera', and I have to say that she's succeeded.

[Nancy Lodge]

Mom’s Choice Award, Readers’ Favorite Best Educational Book of 2015, Kirkus starred Review,
Epic Award, Published in Spanish El navagador di Cristal.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

[Yurika Saito]

Lucy gets A’s on her test but she lost her confidence and she would get lower than A. One day her teacher wasn’t at school and instead there was a new teacher. The teacher gave students a question in an envelope, they would need to find the answer and show to the class. When she got hers she thought she had the difficult question so she went to her friend for help. Her friend was talking about the wise one and how they can solve their problems. Lucy made a wish to a butterfly and the butterfly told the wise one. She then heard whispers at night which told her to go to the woods. Once she made it there she found the wise one. They went in the past looking for artists and how they felt painting their artwork. There were some problems with the navigator who guided them to the past and Wilbur (the wise ones name), the Wilbur and the navigator would change color and Wilbur would feel sick when they were on their journey. At the end they were stuck inside a painting and Lucy was looking around and found crystals she put some into the navigator to find out which one works and they were able to get out and go home, when Lucy went to school she was confident to go first and present everyone was satisfied.

[Ngozi Johnson]

This is an amazing book. It doesn't really matter if you are in the targeted audience or not, you come out with a good lesson.

Lucy Nightingale is a happy child who likes to learn and sees the beauty in little things but one day she encounters a setback that leads to her confidence been damaged. With the help of a wise one "Wilbur", she gets her confidence back and wow her classmates.

This is a good book to introduce children to work of arts and great artists.

I recommend this book for everyone who enjoys reading and learning.

[Katherine]

Finally I have had time to read this.

It's a sweet story that I read with my daughter. We both enjoyed learning about the different artists Lucy meets on her adventure.

[Nancy Lodge]

Instead of reviewing it myself, I'll let this review from a Boston paper say it.



It is rare that a reviewer comes across a book like Nancy Kunhardt Lodge's new middle grade novel, The Crystal Navigator. Dr. Lodge has a Master's degree in Classics and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Art History. Her scholarly articles on Renaissance iconography have been published in English, Italian and German academic journals. She taught full-time at universities in the US and in Italy, and she lectures at the Corcoran Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Associates, and the Frick Gallery. She is on the academic staff of the Kunsthistorisches Library in Florence and the American Academy and Hertziana Library in Rome.

Four year ago, Dr. Lodge stopped teaching full-time to write children’s books. The great granddaughter of both Dorothy Kunhardt, Lincoln scholar and author of Pat the Bunny, and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Dr. Lodge's contribution to education is wide-ranging and eclectic. The Crystal Navigator, a fantasy adventure that addresses real-life issues related adolescence and learning, is set against the backdrop of historical and allegorical truths, in this case the hermeneutics of five great painting and the motivations of the artists who painted them.

Dr. Lodge’s book fills two gaps in children's literature. Until now, children literature, for ages 9-12, lacked a book about the serious issue of school anxiety, or fear of making mistakes. In addition, art history in children's fiction has never been addressed in a serious way, one that is both informative and thrilling.

In The Crystal Navigator, five artists and their most famous paintings are brought to life through the eyes of eleven year-old Lucy Nightingale during her quest to recover her lost confidence. Dr. Lodge told me, “I didn’t want to teach children about art. You learn be experiencing: by seeing, feeling, smelling, touching. I wanted children to feel Lucy’s exhilaration flying with the night breezes sweeping over her face. I wanted them to leap hand in hand with Lucy and Wilbur into Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera and land on the spongy grass of that flower-strewn meadow. I wanted them to feel Lucy’s fear, as she flies with Wilbur dying in her arms over Vincent van Gogh’s dark village in his painting, Starry Night.”

There are several brilliant twists in the conclusion of the book, but the one I found most fascinating relates to how Lucy changed the artists. Although her need to learn from the artists represents the central premise or problem of the book, in fact, the problem is resolved by their need for her insights. She recovers her confidence by informing the lives and art of five of the greatest artists in history. And who is to say a little girl did not wander into Michelangelo’s leaky hut in Rome in 1510 and invent a hat with a candle on the visor so he could see to sculpt at night?

Dr. Lodge’s writing is fluid, poetic, and readable, appealing to readers of all ages. Most important, however, is its value in a classroom context. If the aim of education is to inspire our children to want read, then The Crystal Navigator should be required reading in every school in this country.

Hilary Metcalf

[Polly Callahan]

writing seemed stilted