A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time was a beloved classic in my childhood, and re-reading it now I wonder why I never sought out the rest of the books in the series. It could be that Wrinkle is such a wonderfully self-contained volume that I never felt the need, but now I find myself wondering about the outcome of Meg Murry and her family in their crusade against the Black Thing that threatens Earth.

I say that it is self-contained, and it is--for a serial book, the characters experience quite a bit of well-written growth, traceable, significant, and believable. At the heart of the tale is Meg, who is not as brilliant as her precocious brother Charles Wallace (who reminds me of so many Salinger creations) nor as communicative as her friend Calvin O'Keefe, but comes to learn that her own modest gifts are quite important. I think that this depiction carries an incredibly subtle message, championing the significance of "ordinary people." I mean this completely seriously; it is not only children but many adults in this world who seem to have internalized the idea that exceptional people are the only ones who matter. Many YA authors seem to want to stress how familiar their heroes and heroines are, how like you, the reader, but these are sympathy games. Meg Murry's ordinariness is not a ploy to get you to identify with her; instead, it is a crucial plot point that shows that those gifts available to all people--such as a learned and well-practiced capacity for love--often trump the undeserved brilliance or skill of others.

I am rambling. This book is self-contained but it is not, like Tuck Everlasting, tight. The prose is well-mannered, but the plot is all over the place, racing from Earth to Orion's Belt to the Stepford-like planet of Camazotz to the gray world of Aunt Beast. It is a book that really embraces imagination, and I am certain now that this is why it appealed to me so much as a child. It is full of great images: Camazotz, where every child bounces a ball at the same time, in the same rhythm. Aunt Beast, who is faceless and blind and crowned with tentacles and fur. It owes much to mid-century science fiction, I think, which was bizarre, vivid, and frequently absurd, replete with "space operas" not unlike this one--in contrast to today's science fiction, which endeavors to be sleek, or bleak. But where an adult science fiction novelist would have felt the urge to explain all away in some pseudoscientific babble, L'Engle manages to spin an entire universe from one relatively simple concept: tesseracts, which she describes as way to move through space and time using the fifth dimension. (Note: in reality, a tesseract can be simply defined as a fourth-dimensional cube. Here's an animation. Don't think too long about it.)

So, no, it is not tightly written, but it does manage to balance all its messiness and strangeness on the head of a pin, so to speak. Tuck Everlasting, by contrast, is unfortunately lacking in color and wonder.

Another thing I did not recall about the book is how very Christian in its outlook it is--there are several explicit references to Bible verses, and when young Charles Wallace speaks to the children's guides--three extradimensional beings known as Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit, and Mrs Which--about the Black Thing which is enveloping Earth, he asks why no one has thought to fight it. But, the guides tell him, there have been many warriors against the Black Thing, and Charles Wallace, suddenly realizing, rattles off a list of famous artists, thinkers, and religious figures. But first and foremost on his list is Jesus. Buddha is on there too, of course, but there is no mistaking; in L'Engle's universe, primacy is reserved for Jesus. That's all right, I think; there is little patronizing or indoctrinating about A Wrinkle in Time. Rather, I think it is a much fairer and nuanced depiction of Biblical wisdom than I hear in church every week. It is a Christian book, but to L'Engle's credit, her sparing use of religious imagery gives the few instances great power.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Movies with mice played a large part in my formative years, from The Rescuers to The Secret of Nimh (based on Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) to An American Tail to The Great Mouse Detective. To this day, I find all of these movies highly watchable. When I was a wee thing, my grandma used to make up stories about a character she created called Johnny Mouse. Johnny Mouse (he must be referred to by his full name) was sly and cunning and always outsmarting cats and the people who laid out traps for him. I am telling you all this to explain that when I see a book such as The Tale of Despereaux, it is hard for me to resist.

DiCamillo has crafted a perfectly little fairytale. In the world that she created, mice can talk with humans, but they choose not to. They fear that any interaction with humans will end badly. So they scurry about from wall to wall. Despereaux, an alarmingly undersized mouse with alarmingly oversized ears, was born with his eyes wide open. His parents knew right away that something was different about Despereaux. Instead of nibbling at the bindings and pages of books in the castle library, he sat at the open books reading them, committing their stories to memory. When Despereaux breaks the cardinal rule and actually talks to the princess and her father, he is banished to the dungeon by the mouse elders. There is no assumption that he will live down there, but that he will be eaten by the rats who rule the dark places of the castle. Upon being deposited in the dungeon, Despereaux befriends the jailer and uncovers a plot to kidnap the princess.

The story is narrated beautifully, laden with many direct addresses to the reader. Such as, "Reader, do you know that there is nothing more beautiful in this world than the sound of someone you love calling your name. Nothing." The story is told from different angles and through the eyes of a few different characters that live in the castle.

While on its surface the book is about a tiny, needle-wielding mouse who saves a princess, it is also a lesson about love and forgiveness, and other complicated matters of the heart. Skip The Alchemist and read The Tale of Despereaux.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

The Secret of NIMH was one of those formative animated movies for me when I was a kid. My brother and I loved it, probably because it was one of the more violent films that we had seen up to that point. The final scene has the two main groups of rats battling each other, some get stabbed, some get crushed, and in the end there is some pretty sweet magic. I had no idea that it was based on a book, until the other day when I was in the children's section of Joseph-Beth, looking for The Wednesday Wars. I bought both of the books, decidedly more excited about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

Mrs. Frisby is a widowed field mouse with four children. Every year they move out of their home in the garden, escaping the farmer’s plow. With the time to move approaching, Timothy, Mrs. Frisby’s youngest, gets very sick. She is afraid that moving him with be too much. At the behest of Jeremy, a crow that she rescued from the farmer’s cat, Mrs. Frisby goes to visit the old owl that lives in the woods, who tells her to ask the rats for help. These are no ordinary rats. Something is very different about them. As she works with them to solve her problem, Mrs. Frisby finds out that their past and hers are much more connected than she could ever have imagined.

I was interested to see how the magic at the end of the movie would be explained in the book, since often things make a little more sense in book form than they do as a movie (The Shining anyone?). However, O’Brien’s book has no magic in it whatsoever. His is a story that is easily explained, nearly plausible. I realized this about halfway through the book, and I was okay with it. As much as I like The Secret of NIMH, the ending never quite made sense to me. But I was looking forward to the big battle that took place as the rats were trying to move Mrs. Frisby’s house. The battle wasn’t in the book either. Now that was disappointing.

I would have like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH much more if I had never seen The Secret of NIMH, which created certain expectations. The ending of the book was especially lackluster when compared with its cartoon counterpart. All in all, it was a good book, but I couldn't help but compare it with one of the greatest movies of all time. And in that comparison, it falls a little short.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

This is another book that I somehow missed when I was a kid. In a way, I am glad that I did. I wonder how much I would have like the book had I read it when I was ten. This is no reflection on the book. I'm just not sure how I would have reacted to this book as a child. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Bridge to Terabithia, it filled me with deep sense of nostalgia and at times melancholy, something that I would no doubt not have felt had I read the book at a younger age.

Quite simply, the book is about a friendship between a boy and a girl who live in the countryside of Virginia. Jess and Leslie (Jess is the boy, and Leslie is the girl) develop a close relationship that helps them both to grow as individuals. In other words, it's a coming-of-age story. Katherine Paterson creates beautiful scenes with her simple, delicate prose, rendering the handful of illustrations by Donna Diamond nearly superfluous.

I can't imagine that the recently-released, Disney adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia will be anything but a disservice to the book. From the trailers alone, it looks like they have taken some fairly extreme liberties with the plot. But who knows, I could be wrong.

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

I have fond memories of waking up early nearly every Saturday morning and going downtown to Cincinnati's library with my family. Books were an important part of my childhood early on. Even before we could read, my brother and sister and I would pick out books for my mother to read to us each night before bed. Oddly enough, I had not heard of Number the Stars until this year. I was discussing favorite books over dinner, and Number the Stars was the first book Ann mentioned. Although she had read it as a kid, it wasn't until recently, when she read it again for a class on children's literature that she realized just how good the book was. (I wonder how much her love for the book hinges on the fact that she essentially has the same name as the protagonist.)

I took Ann's recommendation to heart; and it was indeed a great story. The book centers around the Johansen's, a Danish family living in Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The family becomes involved in smuggling Jewish families over to Sweden, where they would be safe from Nazi aggression. The main character of Number the Stars is ten-year-old Annemarie, a young girl who faces her greatest fears in order to save her best friend's family. While Annemarie and the rest of the characters are fictional, many of their experiences are grounded in personal accounts from that time. In the afterword, Ms. Lowry shares excerpts from some of the documents on which her story is based. Just like the characters in the story, these real-life figures display strength and courage in the face of overwhelming adversity.

While reading the book, I was reminded of a quote by Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran minister who spoke out against the nazification of the world around him. His powerful statement has stuck with me.

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. When they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for anyone."

Number the Stars is a book about standing up--not for yourself, but for others. If you have not read this book, read it. Sure, it's written for children, but don't let that stop you. And who knows, maybe walking through the kid's section of the library will bring back a few good memories.