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Chiara is a beginner YouTuber, and she is in 6th grade. During the open day at school, she has to work in team with some other kids – Marcello, a very sporty guy, but also a real bully; Alice and Ginevra, two besties who apparently have nothing in common; Lorenz, a geek; and Filippo, a boy obsessed with food. When the school head forces them to work together at a presentation for a school project, some explosive ideas come out – almost literally, since the whole building will actually risk to burn down. Hidden in the core of the school there is a strange phone box. The scared kids find it, and try to use it in order to call for help. But when they dial the first number, they travel back in time. The only answer they have is a riddle to solve. As soon as Ginevra finds out that they are in Ancient Egypt, at the gates of Alexandria, she drags her friend Alice in Caesar and Cleopatra’s love nest. Lorenz is irremediably attracted by the legendary Library of Alexandria. Chiara and Marcello pretend they are fortune-tellers and they finally reach Cleopatra, who will need their help to manage the upcoming civil war in her reign. If the kids actually solve Cleopatra’s problem, they fail in solving the riddle. The phone box takes them to Athens, in the fifth century BC. Chiara is by now a popular Youtuber thanks to the Instagram live with Cleopatra, so she thinks that being in Athens, birthplace of theatre, is actually a good thing for her. They are in 421 BC and Marcello wants to take part in the ancient Olympic Games in order to write his name in the history of sports. Ginevra meets a weird kid with very large shoulders in the agorà – she believes he’s young Plato. Ginevra and Lorenz help the kid to win a challenge and the three of them enter a mysterious cave, where people who love darkness and hate light live. While Marcello wins the ancient Olympic Games, Filippo solves the riddle. Filippo takes courage and shares his idea with the group. Now that the riddle is solved, they wonder –  would that be enough to come back home and to return to their own time? They pick up the receiver…


Iacopo Montagni was born in 1983. He works as a teacher in the outskirts of Rome. He is a creative teacher who firmly believes in the importance of reading, and he also has a strong passion for writing. In 2004 he published some poems for a contest called  “Anima in versi”. His first young adult novel was born thanks to an idea and a project started within his class.

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