An odd wrinkle...

[xela]

Yesterday I read a feature story — I wish I could remember where. It started with a vignette from a woman's life: How, when she was a little girl, she'd rushed to her grandmother's house around the corner after school one day, to lose herself in the book she'd just been assigned to read: A Wrinkle in Time. The author went on to relate a few details of the sort guaranteed to make anyone who has ever been a young reader enchanted by a book grow misty-eyed.  I was quite charmed by fifty or so words in.

And then, the kicker: The girl's grandmother was Madeline L'Engle.

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I was a voracious reader when I was little — but somehow my reading didn't include many of the books my friends all remember fondly. I was 28 when a girlfriend introduced me to Winnie the Pooh; ten years ago another introduced me to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Those were delights to discover as an adult, as were quite a few others. And it was clear by a few paragraphs in to the article that A Wrinkle in Time would be as well.

So I bought the e-book. But for some reason didn't get a chance to start it until about two hours ago.

I'm enthralled. Not only is the me reading the book today totally loving it — but as I read, I'm feeling the enchantment the ten-year-old me would have felt if he'd read it then. As a passage strikes a chord, I glance at the wall, a fleeting image in my mind's eye. And simultaneously, the memory of what I would see laying in my childhood room, glancing up at the low sloping ceiling and imagining the scene in my ten-year-old-mind's eye.

I can only imagine that this will grow more delightful as I go on. And if by any chance any of you haven't read it: Though I'm only two chapters in, I can recommend it unreservedly. Let's read it together!