A Wrinkle in Time

Hello, all! It is Tuesday again, so we know what that means!

Unfortunately, I did not get to read as much as I would have liked to this week, but I did get to start a new book. I chose to read a science fiction book this week for my 20 Book Challenge. I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle when I was in the fifth grade; however, for whatever reason, I cannot remember a single thing about the book. This probably means that I was uninterested in the book at the time or it was an assigned reading. I specifically remember basically only reading mystery books in fifth grade so I can see why this story would have been unappealing to me.

This time around, I am enjoying the book more than what I had anticipated. Science fiction is still not my genre of choice, but this book is not too shabby so far.

In the first chapter of this book, Meg is sitting in her bedroom in the attic while a violent storm is swishing through the night. She is frightened when a strike of lightning shakes the house. Meg explains that she is not normally frightened by storms, but after the week that she has had, it makes sense why something so trivial would shake her to the core. She goes on to express her feelings of unhappiness with herself in school, her appearance, and even the way that she acts around others. She just feels awkward and out of place majority of the time. Meg, her little brother, Charles Wallace, and her mother, all meet down in the kitchen since they cannot sleep. They enjoy a midnight snack together until their dog, Fortinbras, begins to bark towards the door of her mother's laboratory. Her mother quickly goes into her laboratory, only to find a little old woman named Mrs. Whatsit that Charles Wallace had met a few days prior. She had gotten lost while trying to find her way home during the storm. She lives in a creepy old house in the woods and appears to be quite a peculiar woman. Right before leaving to go home, she mentions to Meg's mother something about a tesseract, which leaves her mother speechless and in awe.

I am so curious as to what a tesseract is in this story, as all I know it to be is a multi-dimensional figure, but I am also curious as to why Meg's mother was in so much shock. I guess I will just have to find out as I continue my journey through this book. I will say, that one of the first things that caught my eye was the descriptive language that the author uses throughout the book. She describes every scene so vividly that it makes it so easy for me, as a reader, to picture what exactly is happening in the story line. I feel that this would be a great book to use to teach upper elementary students about using adjectives and descriptive words. It would provide them with wonderful examples to try to improve the imagery and descriptiveness in their works of writing.

Until next week,

Ashton Schimmelpfennig