Required Reading
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Before I start my geek-out over this book, I’m going to begin by saying that today is YA Fiction day. I think everyone should get in touch with their inner child. You know you love YA Fiction, you always have.
A Wrinkle In Time was my first introduction to science fantasy. This was also the book that drove me to my love for science. I can’t say that I was a normal kid; I played baseball and soccer with my friends, but most of the time you would find me with a book, shoved in my face. I saved up my paper route money (yes, I had a paper route) and I was able to buy myself a sweet science encyclopedia set. You have no idea how awkward it was to haul around one of those giant volumes, but I managed to do it. The idea of warping, manipulating, space and time absolutely fascinated me; it still does.
A Wrinkle in Time is a giant metaphor for Christianity. Don’t let that turn you off from reading it though. A missing father, three crazy old women who are supposedly guardian angels, an adventure that defies dimensions, space, and time; this is brilliant.
Meg knelt at her mother’s feet. The warmth and light of the kitchen had relaxed her so that her attic fears were gone. The cocoa steamed fragrantly in the saucepan; geraniums bloomed on the window sills and there was a bouquet of tiny yellow chrysanthemums in the center of the table. The curtains, red, with a blue and green geometrical pattern, were drawn, and seemed to reflect their cheerfulness throughout the room. The furnace purred like a great, sleepy animal; the lights glowed with steady radiance; outside, alone in the dark, the wind still battered against the house, but the angry power that had frightened Meg while she was alone in the attic was subdued by the familiar comfort of the kitchen. Underneath Mrs. Murry’s chair Fortinbras let out a contented sigh.
Mrs. Murry gently touched Meg’s bruised cheek. Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs. Murry’s flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg’s outrageous plainness. Meg’s hair had been passable as long as she wore it tidily in braids. When she went into high school it was cut, and now she and her mother struggled with putting it up, but one side would come out curly and the other straight, so that she looked even plainer than before.
“You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling?” Mrs. Murry asked. “A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn. That’s a nasty bruise the Henderson boy gave you. By the way, shortly after you’d gone to bed his mother called up to complain about how badly you’d hurt him. I told her that since he’s a year older and at least twenty-five pounds heavier than you are, I thought I was the one who ought to be doing the complaining. But she seemed to think it was all your fault.”
“I suppose that depends on how you look at it,” Meg said. “Usually no matter what happens people think it’s my fault, even if I have nothing to do with it at all. But I’m sorry I tried to fight him. It’s just been an awful week. And I’m full of bad feeling.”
This is part of the Required Reading series, which should be considered more recommendation than requirement.
