{"id":225,"date":"2008-05-27T07:16:55","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T11:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=225"},"modified":"2008-05-27T07:20:50","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T11:20:50","slug":"for-jean-a-wrinkle-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/for-jean-a-wrinkle-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"For Jean ~ A Wrinkle in Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I told Jean that the library’s fifth grade book group was going to be discussing Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time<\/em>, she mentioned that she vividly remembered the scene with the little boy bouncing a ball.\u00c2\u00a0 Since we couldn’t locate the scene in the book at that moment, I made sure to mark it as I read the book for book group.\u00c2\u00a0 There are actually two scenes that Jean might be remembering, so I thought I’d quote them below (both are quoted from the Farrar, Straus and\u00c2\u00a0Giroux reprint of the 1962 Crosswicks edition):<\/p>\n

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns.\u00c2\u00a0 The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray.\u00c2\u00a0 Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door.\u00c2\u00a0 Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house.\u00c2\u00a0 In front of all the houses children were playing.\u00c2\u00a0 Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls.\u00c2\u00a0 Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it.\u00c2\u00a0 She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.<\/p>\n

“Look!” Charles Wallace said suddenly.\u00c2\u00a0 “They’re skipping and bouncing in rhythm!\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone’s doing it at exactly the same moment.”<\/p>\n

This was so.\u00c2\u00a0 As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 Down came the ropes.\u00c2\u00a0 Down came the balls.\u00c2\u00a0 Over and over again.\u00c2\u00a0 Up.\u00c2\u00a0 Down.\u00c2\u00a0 All in rhythm.\u00c2\u00a0 All identical.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the houses.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the paths.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the flowers.\u00c2\u00a0 (pp. 98- 99)<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Second quote, from when Charles Wallace has fallen under the control of IT:<\/p>\n

“Now see this,” he [Charles Wallace] said.\u00c2\u00a0 He raised his hand and suddenly they could see through one of the walls into a small room.\u00c2\u00a0 In the room a little boy was bouncing a ball.\u00c2\u00a0 He was bouncing it in rhythm, and the walls of his little cell seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 And each time the ball\u00c2\u00a0bounced he screamed as though he were in pain.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That’s the little boy we saw this afternoon,” Calvin said sharply, “the little boy who wasn’t bouncing the ball like the others.”<\/p>\n

Charles Wallace giggled again.\u00c2\u00a0 “Yes.\u00c2\u00a0 Every once in a while there’s a little trouble with cooperation, but it’s easily taken care of.\u00c2\u00a0 After today he’ll never desire to deviate again.”\u00c2\u00a0 (pp. 136 – 137)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Wrinkle in Time <\/em>is one of my all-time favorite books, but I hadn’t read it for a few years and had forgotten just how masterful it is.\u00c2\u00a0 And I was very gratified to find out that every child in the fifth grade book group loved it as much as I do; some have even read it multiple times.\u00c2\u00a0 We had a great conversation about the book, focusing primarily on the dark thing and what the dark thing means and does.\u00c2\u00a0 It was great to have such an in-depth discussion with this group of kids, where we zeroed in on one aspect of the book and studied it in detail.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, in rereading the book, I realized that a book I recently discussed on this blog, The Sky Inside<\/em>, owes much to L’Engle’s\u00c2\u00a0novel (for instance, the quote above that describes the sameness of the houses and the children is very much reproduced in the concentric suburb of The Sky Inside<\/em>), though the newer book doesn’t really even begin to compare with L’Engle’s masterpiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I told Jean that the library’s fifth grade book group was going to be discussing Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, she mentioned that she vividly remembered the scene with the little boy bouncing a ball.\u00c2\u00a0 Since we couldn’t locate the scene in the book at that moment, I made sure to mark it … Continue reading For Jean ~ A Wrinkle in Time<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-groups","category-childrens-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}