Let’s try this again, shall we?

I have been trying to get this post in order for nearly two weeks, and I’m pretty sure it ghost posted it last Tuesday when I forgot to send it back to the drafting board for major revisions! (Read: I was still trying to finish re-reading the book!) So here is my RE-vised post about my RE-read of this wonderful book: A Wrinkle In Time.

Do you have a favorite book you read as a child or a young adult? Do you have a book that you still remember vividly even though it has been many, many, (maybe I should put three many’s here because I am in my thirties?) many years since you have read it? Do you have a book(s) that has changed you somehow? Maybe all literature changes us. I haven’t thought on that enough, or formulated a lengthy treatise on the subject.

Maybe LITERATURE is LITERATURE because it’s intent is to CHANGE US– to make us better people in the reading– the purpose of all FINE ART, yes? For purposes of this post it would sound grandiose to say, “The book that changed me most was A WRINKLE IN TIME, by Madeline L’Engle.”

But that statement wouldn’t be totally accurate. In fact, the moment I purposed that statement to myself in my head to write here on the page I began listing other books that changed me, that have sunk in deep. I’ve shared some of them here already– Desert Solitaire, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian are a few I’ve shared here on my blog.

But some other young adult titles come to mind like The Giver, and Maniac Magee, and To Kill A Mocking Bird, and The Devil’s Arithmetic, and Night by Eli Wiesel, and The Book Thief, to name a few.

The ephemera that has stayed with me surrounding A Wrinkle In Time is that it is one of the first books where I not only fell in love with the BOOK itself, I fell in love with the AUTHOR. After finishing A Wrinkle In Time, I remember heading to my elementary school library in search of other titles by Madeline L’Engle. That desire to read everything that someone has written is still a great way to find great books.

I also remember A Wrinkle In Time because it was my soft introduction to sic-fi/fantasy. A genre that I don’t really read much now as an adult, but I remember how much I loved L’Engle’s mix of space, time, science, and off-planet experiences. Now listen, you don’t have to be a geek to enjoy L’Engle’s works.

In fact, they are perfect easy adult reads for lazy summer evenings, and I dare you to read (or re-read) A Wrinkle In Time and NOT seek out the other titles in this series– A Wind In The Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. The premise of A Wrinkle In Time is Meg Murray and her younger brother Charles Wallace’s search for their missing father. A renowned physicist who has gone missing in a top-secret government mission to… the children can only guess.

I cannot get enough of L’Engle’s word use, character descriptions, or dialogue. I revel in her easy use of beautiful verbiage, too. Maybe that sounds like a standard description of what a writer is hoping to do in a text, use beautiful language.

But I’ve recently read some books where the dialogue seemed forced, the word choice sup-par, and the plot over-burdened with drama and continuous details that felt as though the author wasn’t simply trying to navigate you through their story, but bludgeon you with crazy circumstances to keep you reading, i.e ala evening news style. (The House We Grew Up In, I don’t recommend the read.)

Last of all, I love L’Engle for her heart. Yes, ever the sap. I love that Madeline L’Engle loves. She loves to write. She loves her characters, and love is her driving motivation in her work. You can hear it and feel it, and it will fill you up through this book!

XX, Megan