I’m trying to remember the name of these books I read as a kid. It involved a group of friends (maybe 3 kids)? They somehow managed to travel back in time but if they changed anything or too much it could cause ripples in time.
I also slightly remember something about a plane and them being taken from different time periods in the past.
"Plane and kids being taken from the past" immediately makes me think of The Missing, a novel series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the first book of which (Found) was published in 2008.
From Wikipedia:
A thirteen-year-old boy named Jonah had always known that he was adopted and had never thought much of it until he began receiving strange letters sent to his house. When Jonah's friend Chip, who received the same letters, learns that he is also adopted, Jonah, Chip and Jonah's sister, Katherine, set out to find out the truth about their origins.
They end up in the middle of FBI investigation, people appearing and disappearing, and a strange tale from a woman named Angela DuPre, who saw a plane appear (and later disappear) from nowhere, and discovered 36 babies on board, minus pilot and copilot. The three come to realize that Jonah and Chip are important missing children from history who were transported to the 21st century by baby smuggling time travelers, whose names are Gary and Hodge.
Later, they are unknowingly lured into a cave, known as a time hollow, with all but one of the other 36 missing children in an attempt by the smugglers to take them to the future. After they have defeated the smugglers, another time traveler from the future known to them as JB (Janitor Boy) decides to send Chip and another boy, Alex Curtis, back to the 1480s, where they were originally taken from. While trying to stop him, Jonah and Katherine are accidentally taken along for the trip as well, leaving it up to them to save their friends and return to the 21st century.
Later in the series, as any time travel novel, there are considerations of not doing this or that in the past because of the consequences in the future timeline.
Possibly TimeRiders or another book in the TimeRiders series by Alex Scarrow? The series follows three children, Liam O'Connor (an Irish steward saved from the Titanic in 1912), Maddy Carter (saved from a terrorist attack on an aeroplane in 2010) and Sal Vikram (saved from a collapsing building in Mumbai 2026). The three are recruited into an agency set up to preserve the correct flow of history.
From Goodreads:
Liam O’Connor should have died at sea in 1912. Maddy Carter should have died on a plane in 2010. Sal Vikram should have died in a fire in 2026.
Yet moments before death, someone mysteriously appeared and said, ‘Take my hand ...’
But Liam, Maddy and Sal aren’t rescued. They are recruited by an agency that no one knows exists, with only one purpose—to fix broken history. Because time travel is here, and there are those who would go back in time and change the past. That’s why the TimeRiders exist: to protect us. To stop time travel from destroying the world...
Any ideas when the book was written, or the setting? The juvenile time travel premise bears some resemblance to these early 20-th century books
by Elizabeth Nesbit:
by Rudyard Kipling:
Possibly one of The Time Warp Trio books? Three friends go back in time after one of them receives a special blue book from a family member.
