Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Get Talking: A Wrinkle In Time

A little overdue, but here are a few questions to get you talking about A Wrinkle In Time.

A Wrinkle In Time is very much a novel about good vs. evil. Who in the book represents good? Who represents evil?

At the beginning of the book, Meg isn't happy with who she is.  Have you ever felt like that?  Have you ever wanted to be just like everyone else?

What makes Charles Wallace so extraordinary. How do these traits both hurt and help him on Camazotz?

If you had the opportunity to time travel, would you? If you could chose the time, what time period would you travel to? The past? The future?

Why does the school principal, Mr. Jenkins, want Meg to accept that her father is never coming home? Should Meg believe him? Why? Why not?

How is Calvin’s home life different from Meg’s? How is his school life different from Meg’s?

How would you react if you were taken on a surprise journey to another planet?

Who are some of the famous people mentioned as fighting the Dark Thing? What do they all have in common?

Charles Wallace says that they can’t make decisions based on fear. Do you agree?

What does Meg have that IT doesn’t have? Is this something she can use in other situations? If so, how?


Friday, May 4, 2012

Book Blurb: A Wrinkle In Time


File:A wrinkle in time digest 2007.jpg

"It was a dark and stormy night." 
Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. She claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract,” which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time.
Meg’s father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?


About the Author

Madeleine was born on November 29th, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would much rather be writing stories, poems and journals for herself, which was reflected in her grades (not the best). However, she was not discouraged.
At age 12, she moved to the French Alps with her parents and went to an English boarding school where, thankfully, her passion for writing continued to grow. She flourished during her high school years back in the United States at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, vacationing with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida Beach.
She went to Smith College and studied English with some wonderful teachers as she read the classics and continued her own creative writing. She graduated with honors and moved into a Greenwich Village apartment in New York. She worked in the theater, where Equity union pay and a flexible schedule afforded her the time to write! She published her first two novels during these years—A Small Rain and Ilsa—before meeting Hugh Franklin, her future husband, when she was an understudy in Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. They married during The Joyous Season.

She had a baby girl and kept on writing, eventually moving to Connecticut to raise the family away from the city in a small dairy farm village with more cows than people. They bought a dead general store, and brought it to life for 9 years. They moved back to the city with three children, and Hugh revitalized his professional acting career.
As the years passed and the children grew, Madeleine continued to write and Hugh to act, and they to enjoy each other and life. Madeleine began her association with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where she was  the librarian and maintained an office for more than thirty years. After Hugh’s death in 1986, it was her writing and lecturing that kept her going. She lived through the 20th century and into the 21st and wrote over 60 books. She enjoyed being with her friends, her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren.

Taken from http://www.madeleinelengle.com/