Today we’re spotlighting LILY TRIPP: DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL TIME TRAVELER by Amelia Tait!
Read on for more about the author and the book!
About the Author: Amelia Tait
Amelia Tait built her career as a freelance features journalist, exploring lifestyle, culture, humor and trend stories for publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The New Statesman. In 2020, she was named as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Europe.
About the Book: LILY TRIPP: DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL TIME TRAVELER
The start of a brilliantly funny accidental time-travel diary series for tweens. It’s Back to the Future meets Judy Blume, with a 13-year-old girl who tackles timeslip mishaps, laugh-out-loud embarrassing moments, and one unpredictable adventure after another.
Hi! I’m Lily. My birthday is in two weeks and I have a big secret: Every New Year’s when the clock strikes midnight, I time travel to a new century. Mind-blowing, right!?
Thank goodness my cat, best friend, and school crush always turn up, too. But I still have a ton of problems… like why is my arch-nemesis, Georgia, so good at ye olde insults? How does anyone survive in Ancient Rome without chicken nuggets? Why are my brother’s clothes so ridiculous in every century? And why on earth can’t I stay in one era!?
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~Excerpt~
5:04 p.m., Thursday,
December 18, 2025
There are three things you need to know about me, but, unfortunately, I can only tell you two.
- My name is Lily Tripp
- I turn thirteen in two weeks
There’s currently a bearded man on our kitchen counter going on and on about “living in the present”— he’s saying it over and over again because my mum is too busy chopping potatoes to swipe to the next video on her phone.
“Ladies”—he’s grinning, staring up at the constellation of ceiling lights above him— “free yourselves from your pasts.
Learn to live in the moment.”
That’s what I’m doing right here, right now. I’m becoming the most pre sent person to ever live in the pre sent precisely because of my past, which— not to brag— contains the most past of any past that’s ever passed.
Sorry, that might’ve been a little deep. You can tell I’m new to this whole “diary” thing.
I’m sitting at the table scribbling in this old, bent spiral note pad with my glittery purple gel pen that used to smell like grapes. My mum is making a cheesy potato bake. My fourteen- year- old brother, Harry, is being a cheesy potato bake— shouting, “It’s- a me!” every time he kills a mushroom- looking thing in Mario. My dad (who’s an accountant) is in the other room with the old- school calculator he takes everywhere, even to the loo.
“Lil, will you help me grate some cheese, please?” Mum’s just asked. I know I should’ve started grating instead of writ ing that down, but I’m trying to stay in the moment.
“ Can’t Harry do it?”
“Not after what happened last time.”
“Ugh.”
Right, I’m back. Sorry about that little smear of cheese. So the best thing about living in the moment right now is that I don’t have any homework because it’s almost Christmas. The biggest (and, I think, only???) thing I have to worry about is that tomorrow is non-uniform day and Harry spilled a banana milkshake all over my fuzzy checkered cardigan. You actually can’t see the stain, but there’s a lingering . . . scent. I don’t want to be “that girl who smells like fake bananas,” so I’m going to have to wear my light- pink sweater instead.
I just texted Poppy to ask what she’s wearing, but she said
it’s a “surprise.” Even though I became best friends with her a hundred years ago, I’m still not used to Poppy’s “surprises.” All I can picture is the twenty purple balloons that turned her into a bunch of grapes at Halloween.
Apart from Poppy, I don’t really have many other friends at school, but I don’t mind, because I do have Ollie, the love of my life. He doesn’t actually know that’s what he is yet or anything, but still.
So there you go. That’s my pre sent moment, and do you know what? I’m definitely, definitely, definitely going to stay living in it, just like the bearded man said I should.
Overall, middle school can be a lot, sure, but it’s nowhere near as bad as watching an ox get ritually sacrificed by a man in a toga.
Title: LILY TRIPP: DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL TIME TRAVELER
Author: Amelia Tait
Release Date: May 12, 2026
Publisher: FSG Books for Young Readers
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Age Range: 10-14
