The Infinite (Leap Cycle #1)

by Patience Agbabi (Author)

Reading Level: 4th − 5th Grade
Series: Leap Cycle

"What an inspiration. The future just got so much better" ― Benjamin Zephaniah

FIGHT CRIME, ACROSS TIME!

The Infinite is a mind-bending, time-twisting adventure for readers who loved TIME TRAVELLING WITH A HAMSTER and A WRINKLE IN TIME. The first book in THE LEAP CYCLE series.

Leaplings, children born on the 29th of February, are very rare. Rarer still are Leaplings with The Gift - the ability to leap through time. Elle Bíbi-Imbelé Ifíè has The Gift, but she's never used it. Until now.

On her twelfth birthday, Elle and her best friend, Big Ben, travel to the Time Squad Centre in 2048. Elle has received a mysterious warning from the future. Other Leaplings are disappearing in time - and not everyone at the centre can be trusted.

Soon Elle's adventure becomes more than a race through time. It's a race against time. She must fight to save the world as she knows it - before it ceases to exist . . .

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Publishers Weekly

British Nigerian Elle Bíbi-Imbelé Ifíè, who is autistic, is a Leapling: someone born on February 29. Now that's she's approaching her seventh year at Intercalary International--a top secret boarding school for the 0.6 % of Leaplings who have what Elle calls The Gift--she's finally allowed to use the time-travel ability she's cultivated at school to participate on a class trip to 2048. Once there, she'll tour Time Squad Headquarters, home to an elite team of time travelers responsible for maintaining order across all time. It's there that Elle and her math-savvy best friend Big Ben--who reads as white and is also autistic--learn that Leaplings have been disappearing across myriad timelines. Teaming up with a Leapling named Ama who's searching for her missing brother, Elle and Big Ben endeavor to piece together the clues and save the vanished Leaplings. Occasionally leaning on familiar tropes when developing the variously neurodivergent cast, debut author Agbabi nevertheless delivers a layered, time-bending adventure through Elle's astute and cheeky narration, intertwining a clever mystery with lightly ecologically focused problem-solving. Ages 9-11. (May)

Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

The Infinite is vivid, funny, exciting and inventive. But there are books that are all those things and still don't work. This works brilliantly, and the characters are so delightful that I don't think anyone could fail to like them. I was so fond of Elle and Big Ben that I'd have followed them anywhere. Patience Agbabi has created something fresh and original here, and I look forward very much to what she writes next—PHILIP PULLMAN
Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi was born in London in 1965 to Nigerian parents, spent her teenage years living in North Wales and now lives in Kent with her husband and children. She has been writing poetry for over twenty years, The Infinite is her first novel. Like Elle, she loves sprinting, numbers and pepper soup, but, disappointingly, her leaping is less spectacular.

The Infinite is the first book in The Leap Cycle series.

Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9781786899651
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Canongate Books
Publication date
May 02, 2023
Series
Leap Cycle
BISAC categories
JUV037000 - Juvenile Fiction | Fantasy & Magic
JUV001000 - Juvenile Fiction | Action & Adventure
JUV045000 - Juvenile Fiction | Readers | Chapter Books
JUV064000 - Juvenile Fiction | Time Travel
JUV077000 - Juvenile Fiction | Neurodiversity
Library of Congress categories
Friendship
Missing children
Science fiction
Autistic children
Ability
Girls

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