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Category: Young Adult Reviews

Retro Review: A Wrinkle in Time

Now introducing Retro Review, where I review books from the past.  Books aren’t like technology; they don’t become obsolete after time.  Dive in to discover great reads you might not have known about.

Verdict: A classic, that you should have read, like yesterday

Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is a classic of children’s literature, staring one of the first heroines of sci-fi.  Young Meg Murry is struggling.  Her scientist father left to work on a top-secret government project, and the Murry family hasn’t heard from him in months.  Meg is an outcast at school, where teachers accuse her of using her father’s disappearance to justify bad grades.  Classmates mock her.  Even at home, Meg feels like she doesn’t fit in with her brilliant family, despite her scientist mother’s assurances that Meg is a late bloomer.  One dark and stormy night, a strange visitor drops by the Murry house.  This visitor, Ms. Whatsit, leads Meg on an epic journey to rescue her father from a hostile force on an alien planet.

Review: The Rithmatist

Verdict: Recommended

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson is set in an alternate, gearpunk imagining of the United States, where people with the ability to work magic through chalk drawings fight against wild chalklings—chalk creatures that kill humans.  The story follows Joel, teenaged son of a cleaning lady, who does not possess the magical ability, called Rithmatics.  That he was not chosen to receive the gift of Rithmatics is a sore spot for Joel, yet he manages to land an independent study at his school with a kindly Rithmatics professor, Fitch.  After the mysterious disappearances of young Rithmatists, Fitch has Joel and his other student, Melody, help him unravel the case.

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