YA Book Council discussion

Post your thoughts on:

Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me (our March book)
or
Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (our May book)

or both! I'll reserve my comments until after the meeting today.

I liked When You Reach Me, I thought the ending was pretty sad. At this point some of the details are fuzzy but I remember generally liking it.

A Wrinkle in Time was kind of odd for me to read because this isn't something I have fond memories of reading as a child or anything (which I think is the case for some members of the club?) so it was a little weird for me to get used to the way the story was being told. Hmm.. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to explain here.

One thing I think I very much liked was that one race that Meg kept referring to as "beasts". When they asked Meg about sight, and after she had no way of explaining it I sat there for a good while wondering how I would explain sight to another being with no concept of it whatsoever. So that was entertaining to consider.

Also, am I supposed to read the other books in the series to understand details such as why Charles was so special? Or was that explained and I just don't remember?

A few of us pointed out that the writing style of A Wrinkle in Time was "archaic" or old fashioned--which is natural considering it was written in the 60s. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why many of us couldn't get used to it.

The lost of magic was another reason--at least for those who read the book when they were kids. I wasn't one of them, but I totally understand how it feels. I feel the same way about The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember loving those stories when I was younger, but I recently re-read the series and no longer feel the same way. I started noticing things that I hadn't noticed before, like the spiritual allusions and such. Don't get me wrong--I still really like the series, but reading them as an adult is not the same as reading them as a kid. It's rather depressing.

Makes sense, wasn't this also the case for the Chrestomanci book?

I'm reading Narnia now, actually, and I keep wondering how differently a kid would see these books. I'm enjoying them, but like you said, I'm noticing the spiritual/religious stuff in there, and it definitely gets depressing at times.

The book was okay not great but not bad either. I didn’t like how the whole different planet and evil cloud thing came together it’s was to unreal for me. I did get all the spiritual part of the book. I surprise because that’s the only part I understood. I didn’t get all the story line. I didn’t like the three witches the way of talking get getting me annoyed. I hope I make since in what Im trying to say since Imp not good in writing what I want to say.

Don't worry, you make sense, I wasn't all that into how the storyline was going either. I didn't see any spiritual parts though, is there anything specific you're talking about?

I get what you're saying Damaris... I thought the storyline was intangible; there wasn't really a sense of place or time or even people. I also think that was the point to the story. It was very different from When You Reach Me which had a strong sense of place, characters, and time.

Rox, I noticed several spiritual parts. Mostly toward the end.

I'm completely blanking...

I had mentioned in the meeting that I would have felt different about the book if I read it when I was younger. I thought that the ending was rushed.

If I would have read it when the book was released in the 60's, my imagination would have run wild. We were racing to the moon, so time travel would have felt like a possibility. Imagine, just imagine. I SAID IMAGINE!

Well since you're being so aggressive, I absolutely refuse to imagine!

I agree, the ending was a bit rushed for me. She just pops in there and rescues him, then they're all back home. I wanted to go back and spend more time with the "beast" people.

I remember loving this whole series. I'm kind of sad that re-reading it is not as great of an experience. :/