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.