The first time I heard the phrase “wormhole” in science fiction, and then heard the explanation, I thought, “Oh, it’s a tesseract.” The second time, I said that aloud, and someone said, “It’s a what?”

So I explained about this great book that had been handed to me on a stormy summer night in Colorado, with Dracula lightning arcing across the sky, and the wind making monsters of the trees, and me reading all night with a flashlight under the covers. I think I was all of eight. And I think that was also the night I ate so many carob chips i made myself sick. (To this day the waxy not-quite-chocolate taste of carob makes me nauseous.)

Meg and Charles Wallace and the twins, and their mother, Calvin and the Witches (Mrs. Who et al) quickly became my friends, as their adventures leapt from one book to another, though time, and even into mitochondria, but they never became boring.

Since then, I’ve also read a lot of Madeleine L’Engle’s normal (adult) fiction, and the characters in those works are just as compelling.

If you haven’t travelled by imaginary tesseract, you’re missing out.

argiope-web2

Originally uploaded by Ms.Snarky.

Charlotte’s Web is a favorite novel of many people in my age group, because we all grew up with the book and the movie, but my back yard hosts spiders way prettier than the divine Miss C. After all, isn’t she a common grey or brown orb weaver?

This stunning young woman is last year’s representative of the argiope family, and she’s also known as a writing spider.

Legend says that if a writing spider spins your name into their web you’ll die, but so far, I’d not worry – she only ever seems to spell ZZZZZZZZZ.

Argiopes only live about a year, so this one’s likely moved on to a different plane of existence, but her daughter or sister or…whatever…took up residence here just a few days ago.

Spooky, non?

I don’t remember how I managed to acquire a copy of Richard Peck’s Ghosts I Have Been, but it was probably school-related, and I probably thought it sounded cool, or scary, or both.

In any case, I was easily hooked on the tale of Blossom Culp, a grade-school seer from the wrong side of the tracks who isn’t just a character of the book, she’s also the narrator and as she explains, she’s not only seen several ghosts, she’s also been a couple.

Blossom’s adventures have her travelling back and forth in time and distance, including a meeting with the Queen of England (she’s American, herself), and debunking a famous medium, but it’s the relationships between the characters that make the story so readable.

I definitely recommend it.

I don’t think there’s anyone alive who didn’t, at some point in their childhood, declare that they were running away.

But most of us didn’t actually do it.
Then again, most of us aren’t Claudia or James Kincaid, the two young protagonists of the Newberry Award winning novel, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiller.

Claudia and James are siblings from Greenwich Connecticut who not only run away from home, but decide that they need to hide somewhere comfortable, so naturally they choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Manhattan.

It’s a fast read, but a good one, no matter the age of the reader, and the mystery within the book is a bit of added spice.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” — Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

It’s a simple fable about two toys, a velveteen rabbit, and a skin horse, but in it’s 40 or so pages, this book holds magic and wonder, innocence, and the essence of love. I first encountered it as a small child – another of the books my grandfather read to me. As an obnoxious teenager a television show brought it back into my life, and though I’ve never really paid it much attention, it’s lurked in the back of my brain seemingly forever.

I offer it now, as a tribute to my grandparents, both deceased, and to the legacy of literacy they gave to others as volunteers in the Right to Read program at their community library in New Jersey.

Whatever else they were, they were both Real.

I’d been reading Diane Duane’s work for years when I was recently (2004-ish) introduced to her YA series about young wizards, which began with So You Want to Be a Wizard, and continued from there. (I’ll confess that I first read her it was a Star Trek novel – see – told you I was a geek).

This series, though, is completely original. It ties into another work of hers The Book of Night with Moon which is a must-read for cat-lovers everywhere, but can be read without that volume as well. The characters are, for the most part, realistically drawn gifted children, and the plots, while resolved, always have some loose thread that could be a sequel, or just a tangent.

I read them as an adult; so should you.

“For all the Gods are one God,” she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I hae said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again,” and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and there is only one Initiator,. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.” — Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

I was fourteen when I first encountered MZB’s take on Arthurian legend, and it was those words from the preface, spoken by the woman most people know as Morgan le Fay, but whom we meet as simply Morgaine, that sold me on it.

I tend to buy books more than borrow them from the library because library books always smell musty, or they absorb the smell of cigarette smoke, or they’re just creepy, and this book was no different. It looked interesting, and I already knew I liked the subject so I bought it.

Was I in for a treat! Arthur’s story from a female perspective! Arthur’s story from a perspective that wasn’t just black and white, but many many shades of grey, with tonal nuances that only a woman could write. I was in love.

Only later did I discover that MZB had authored the Darkover series, which I also love. Like the Anne McCaffrey PERN books I’d read the year I was thirteen, Darkover featured a low-tech society, but a much more believeable one – well, if you consider telepathy and breeding with ocean-dwellers ‘believable’ – and unlike AnnieMac MZB’s female characters don’t all become babymaking machines and give up their identities.

In any case, The Mists of Avalon stands as one of my favorite books of all time, especially since it’s satisfyingly LONG. I’d skip the sequels and prequels though – they don’t have the same magic.

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.
–Ogden Nash

Strictly speaking, Ogden Nash did not write for children. Strictly speaking, Ogden Nash should not be read by children, at least not without parental supervision, but, the truth is, he was a very witty poet, and some of his stuff should not be missed. A lot of it, btw, is either so silly or so gross, children will love it.

A dear family friend (Yes, HMF, I mean you) introduced me to “The Tale of Custard the Dragon” so long ago, I don’t remember it clearly. For that matter, I’m betting SHE doesn’t remember it clearly, if at all.

But the poem’s been stuck in my brain for years, decades, eons – since dirt, really – and I cannot resist the temptation to share a bit of it here.

And yeah, Ogden Nash is also the guy who actually wrote Peas & Honey.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

“I’ve stolen a garden,” she said very fast. “It isn’t mine. It isn’t anybody’s. Nobody wants it, nobody cares for it, nobody ever goes into it. Perhaps everything is dead in it already; I don’t know.” — Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

When a thing is wick and someone cares about it
And comes to work each day, like you and me,
will it grow?

Then have no doubt about it.
We’ll have the grandest garden ever seen.
— from “Wick,” from the musical version of The Secret Garden

She was sallow, selfish, solitary and snarky, the orphaned daughter of two parents who never really paid attention to her upbringing, and she was cast into a life on the Yorkshire moors with no real information about how the rest of the world behaved.

She was Mary Lennox, and she was a brat when she arrived in my life at the beginning of The Secret Garden, but as Burnett’s classic tale spun out, Mary became more and more human, and less and less annoying, until, by the end of the book, she is a wonderfully dear little girl. Like Burnett’s other popular work, A Little Princess, one of the messages in Mary’s story is to be true to yourself, but also to take responsibility, and Mary does both with much charm and grace.

As a child, I always wanted a robin to lead me to a magic door in the fence.

As an adult, I still do…sort of.

The last six hours are the hardest. This is when the posting becomes less coherent and the sugar and caffeine flow more freely. Help me through it by logging onto YIM (ymedath) AIM (ymedath), MSN (ms.snarky@gmail.com) or ICQ (missmeliss) and chatting with me.

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