First Pages: A Wrinkle in Time

The first page of A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'engle

Even though it is a classic, I haven't read A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'engle yet.  Yet.  Mini Me read it a few years ago as part of a book club and I somehow managed not to read it even though I was there for the discussion.  However, I'm including it here in our First Pages/First Lines discussion series not only because the film is being released later this month, but because this classic contains a CLASSIC line.  How much more classic can we get than 'It was a dark and stormy night'?!

Now, there's no way I can get away with starting a novel or story that way unless I was being tongue-in-cheek.  But reading it here made me giggle.  And there's so much that pulls the reader in right away with the mystery in the title of the book itself, and in the whole setting surrounding Meg immediately.  Why is the ground shaking? Why is Meg shaking if she isn't scared?  I can tell you that I'm interested right away and may let this book 'jump in the line' in my TBR pile.

On a a side note, this first line makes me immediately think of another classic, the Peanuts comic strip.  I'm pretty sure that Charles Schulz had many a frame of Snoopy writing on his typewriter this very same first line! (PS I found one version of it; see below.)

Tell Dr. Bookworm!

I'm planning on watching A Wrinkle In Time with Mini Me in a few weeks (hopefully after I read the book).  Are you planning on seeing it?  I'll cover it for our Book Versus Movie series.  Any other book/movie adaptations I need to investigate?

One version of Snoopy's 'dark and stormy night' riff.