Novacek begins Time Traveler by saying, "As odd as it may seem, Los Angeles is a particularly good place to become a paleontologist." At age 53, Novacek still grins from the dustjacket of Time Traveler like a tousle-haired young boy who is extremely excited to be allowed to go dig up dinosaurs for a living. That feeling of excitement stays with the reader throughout the book.
Novacek writes about a nun in his Catholic school "swooping" down on him as he attempted to conceal a copy of the Time-Life book The World We Live In behind his catechism. "There you are once again reading about monsters!" shouts the nun, throwing the book to the floor and stamping on it. This disapproval does not deter Novacek. He visits the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits as often as he can as a child. Novacek even manages to conduct his first field expedition on "Dinosaur Island," a vacant lot with buried concrete blocks that Novacek and friends are able to pretend are the vertebral column of a sauropod dinosaur.
Novacek's parents encouraged his curiosity as a child. They took him and his three brothers on many outings where the family could look for fossils and other interesting tidbits of the natural world. Novacek would beg to return to the Grand Canyon for all family vacations.
At the age of ten, the young Novacek is parted from his beloved Los Angeles when the family moves to Wisconsin for a three-year period. He is disappointed to leave the Grand Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains and the La Brea Tar Pits. "I knew enough to know that Wisconsin was mainly a land of very old, boring rocks...I was apprehensive about leaving what I viewed as real fossil country." He is at first reluctant to leave Wisconsin when the family moves back to LA, but once they begin to near the Grand Canyon on the drive home he becomes excited about the place once again.
