Looking for a thrilling and imaginative new read? The Doomsday Vault from Thomas Wheeler’s new Everwhen School of Time Travel (and Other Odd Sciences) series checks all the most important boxes:
An interdimensional school for time travelers (that is also a time machine!) ✅
Students and dorms from all different eras in history ✅
A cursed formula mysteriously scribbled on a whiteboard ✅
A shady intergalactic secret society ✅
Twisty time travel adventure, wild inventions, and imaginative science ✅
At the Everwhen School of Time Travel (and Other Odd Sciences), meeting a new friend isn’t about discovering where they’re from. What matters is when they’re from. Because the Everwhen school isn’t your ordinary boarding school – it’s a time machine, packed with students from different eras in history and dorms nestled within different time periods. Everwhen empowers the most brilliant minds through science, innovation, and experimentation and encourages them to use the technology and progress of the future to fix mistakes of the past. It’s a place where dreaming and clever thinking aren’t just rewarded – they’re prioritized. (And the smoothie menu is out of this world outrageous!)
When Bertie accidentally creates a black hole in his bedroom in 1878 that somehow ends up with him being offered an unlikely invitation to Everwhen, he’s transported to 2022, where the modern world is just as surprising as his new friends, Amelia Da Vinci (aka Millie, from 1471) and Zoe Fuentes (a modern girl who created sentient slime).
From the screenwriter of Academy Award–nominated Puss in Boots and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish comes an inventive middle grade adventure about an interdimensional school for time travelers perfect for fans of the Spy School and Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series.
When Bertie Wells accidentally creates a black hole in his bedroom in the year 1878, it’s the very last thing he expects—except maybe the grown-up who steps out. Darla Marconi dresses and speaks like no one Bertie has met and comes with an offer: Bertie is invited to attend the College of Space Machines, Multiverses, and Other Odd Sciences (COSMOS for short, because no one would go to a school called COSMMOOS).
He is skeptical to say the least but, not having anything better to do, Bertie agrees. His day only gets weirder from there as he’s transported to 2022 for his first semester of school. Thankfully, he’s not alone—144 years in the future, math whiz Zoe Fuentes just accepted the same invitation, and 550 years in the past, Amelia da Vinci (yes, that da Vinci) has also decided to attend.
The three team up and work together to survive the year, including weathering a time paradox, solving the case of a disappearing dean, and uncovering the truth behind a shady intergalactic secret society. At least time is on their side!
Everwhen School of Time Travel (and Other Odd Sciences): The Doomsday Vault
AUTHOR: Thomas Wheeler
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
DATE: January 28, 2025
Alternating chapters dive into all three characters: Bertie, facing imposter syndrome and eager to prove himself after discovering he’s at the bottom of the Everwhen rankings. Zoe, a genius who’s grappling with the loss of her mother and an important promise she made her. And Millie, who is brilliant enough to have invented a flying machine, but frustrated because she’s still somehow always stuck in her brother Leonardo’s shadow. Each character has something to prove both to the world and themselves, fueling their motivations as they team up together to face their fears, take on a time paradox, a disappearing dean, open a doomsday vault, and unravel the mystery of an intergalactic society. No big deal!
Equal parts hilarious and heartwarming, this fast-paced, silly, sciencey read is a total page-turner. (Oh, and did we mention a movie adaptation is already in the works?) There is SO much to love about this story – way too much for us to divulge without major spoilers, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to give you a little peek into the story anyway!
Author Thomas Wheeler is taking our readers even deeper into the world of Everwhen, sharing a few Fun Facts about The Doomsday Vault and dishing out details about these unlikely besties. Get to know Bertie, Zoe, and Millie with a peek into the Everwhen Yearbook and Roommate Questionnaires.
Go Beyond the Pages of The Doomsday Vault with Author Thomas Wheeler:
Beware the Glitches:
Did you know one of the most dangerous threats in Everwhen doesn’t even show up in the novel?
They’re called ‘glitches,’ and they’re leftover anomalies from Dean Chen and Dr. Kinds’ earliest time travel experiments. At first glance they seem fairly innocent: just staticky, sparky, grouchy, globs of light floating around the Everwhen campus. In fact, one 10th year (we suspect it was Duke the Doberman) snuck a glitch into Bertie’s under-drawers during an Interdimensional Chemistry class and it rewound Bertie at triple-speed all the way back to the Pupin Dorms so he had to eat his squirrel breakfast twice!
The problem is: in bigger numbers, glitches can become true chronal threats. But these ‘Glitch Mobs’ as their called are mostly rumor. No ones actually seen one. At least…not yet…
Do you want to write stories about fantastic worlds? Meditate!
It’s true! Everwhen came to me in a meditation: the world, the characters, even the school charter: “No child should be denied a great education no matter what time they were born in.”
While sitting in silence for twenty minutes with a clear mind may not sound very exciting to some of you, it happens to be one of the most creative states that exists. Give it a shot! I’m a big believer that a day of writing (or a day of dreaming up stories) is like owning a shop and ideas are the customers. Now, you don’t know how many customers you might have in a day but it’s still your job to keep the shop open! When you meditate it’s like you expand the shop until it’s the size of a football stadium and the doors are suuuuper wide for those ideas to float inside.
I tell my kids it’s a secret super-power that anyone can have. It also helps with homework, can improve your friendships, it even helps you fight off colds. So, if you’re reading this: you may have a crazy fun novel floating around you, all you have to do is quiet your mind throw open the doors and windows of your shop and let it in!
Dreams are also a great place to get your ideas. In fact, my daughter had a dream about the Before-a-nauts and I thought it was such a cool idea I put it in the novel!
Primordial black holes (like the one in Bertie’s bedroom) really exist!:
But here’s the trick, even though they are quite small, some as small as an atom but with the mass of a MOUNTAIN, they’re not ‘baby’ black holes at all. They’re actually the oldest particles in all of existence!
A long, long time ago, right after the Big Bang, the universe was like a crazy chaotic soup. Some spots in this soup were extra squished, like cosmic pressure cookers or the cream on your hot cocoa when it gets too hot and slimes on the side of your mug. These spots became so dense with that early, powerful cosmic energy they collapsed into tiny black holes. They’re like ancient fossils, floating invisibly through the universe holding the secrets about how everything began. They’re tricky to find because they’re small and don’t shine like stars.
Scientists are like cosmic detectives, using telescopes and clever experiments to look for their sneaky effects, like bending light or tiny flashes of radiation.
Get to Know Bertie, Zoe, and Millie:
Before getting their room assignments, Bertie, Millie, and Zoe had to fill out a room questionnaire to place them with a compatible roomie. Here are some excerpted answers!
Roommate Questionnaires:
Bertie Wells:
FAVORITE BOOK: Arabian Nights
FAVORITE MAGAZINES: Boys’ Own Paper and Punch
FAVORITE MOVIE: What’s a movie?
EARLY RISER OR NIGHT OWL: Early Riser, my Dad’s a bit of a stickler for a 7am wake up and I’ve gotten rather used to it.
Zoe Fuentes:
PET PEEVES: Snoring, clothes not folded, people who ask lots of questions, people who get colds, bare feet, slow walkers, loud typers, people who eat pizza crust-first, I mean how many do I need to write down?
EARLY RISER OR NIGHT OWL: I am a polyphasic sleeper so I’m awake pretty much 24 hours a day and sleep in 20-minute-nap-cycles just like Thomas Edison to increase my productivity.
Millie Da Vinci:
FAVORITE MUSIC: In the spring festival there were madrigal singers who sang so beautifully. My favorite instrument is the lute, and I hope to learn to play it one day. My brother Leonardo plays the lira de braccio which is like a violin. He plays very well and it makes me so jealous!
EARLY RISER OR NIGHT OWL: I get my best ideas for inventions in the middle of the night so I hope my roommate does not mind the sound of hammers or saws when the moon is at its highest!
Everwhen Yearbook:
And in case you were wondering, here are the yearbook blurbs for Millie, Zoe, and Bertie. It was quite a year!
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS – 9th Year – “Bertie”:
LAB GROUP: Haz-Labs
FAVORITE QUOTE: “The ‘Aha’ moment changes the world.” – Dean Chen
FAVORITE NEVERWHEN HANGOUT: Never-Ring junkyard (sometimes!)
FAVORITE FOOD: Jellied Eels (but the squirrel is growing on me!)
FAVORITE MEMORY: Being chased by the army of Genghis Khan
FAVORITE SMOOTHIE: Definitely NOT the Minty Magnet!
PET PEEVES: Mold spores in the Hall of Heroes, Spaghettification, Dimensional Breaches, Door 7…
SHOUTOUTS: ADV, ZF, RG (and RG), BW, ATLAS and Dad, Saver of Tuesday, apologies to Hannibal
ZOE FUENTES – 9th year – Proud “Slime Girl”:
LAB GROUP: Haz-Labs (although I’m still holding out for Quantum Field Trips!)
FAVORITE QUOTE: “To achieve great things, you have to take big risks.” – Ahmed Zewail
FAVORITE SMOOTHIE: When Millie drinks the Forest Floom. And the Wet Sneeze when I have a cold.
FAVORITE MEMORY: Solving the Haunted Formula (Also my worst memory. Can it count for both?)
SHOUTOUTS: HGW, ADV, Love you Mom (and Birthday Cake, Lava Crunch and Mermaid Poop)
AMELIA DA VINCI – 9th year – “Millie”:
LAB GROUP: Proud Haz-Labber! Gurgy forever!
FAVORITE SMOOTHIE: Forest Floom!
FAVORITE MEMORY: Study hall at Volta Fountain, Skippy (those who know know), nano-tube fights, anti-Xeno, finding Tuesday, ATLAS dance parties (Raul’s wiggle worm!), forgetting my name (curse you, Pasteur Dorm elevators!) morning cappuccino in the Eiffel Tower (we love you Pasteur Dorms!), Ice Age snowball fights, killer plants from Attis-10.
SHOUTOUTS: ZF, HGW, the 2 Rauls
📚NEED MORE BOOK RECS?: Peep the January edition of our YAYBOOKS! Roundup, for 24 brand new books to stack your shelves with!
