Vicky Austin
Victoria "Vicky" Austin is one of Madeleine L'Engle's frequently used fictional characters, appearing in eight books and referred to in at least one more. She is the protagonist of the Austin family series of books being the first person narrator of ''Meet the Austins'', ''The Moon by Night'', ''A Ring of Endless Light'', ''Troubling a Star'', and (as a younger child) the picture book ''The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas''. A developing poet and writer, Vicky observes the everyday events in her large family, dates several boys, communicates with dolphins, faces the occasional mortal danger, and reflects on important issues about life and death, faith and family as she gradually comes of age. Character traits Vicky is the second eldest of four children. With a future astrophysicist (John) for an older brother and a younger sister (Suzy) who has always wanted to be a doctor, Vicky sometimes feels at odds with others in her family with her less purposeful, more philosophical appr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Meet The Austins
''Meet the Austins'' is the title of a 1960 novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the first of her books about the Austin family. It introduces the characters Vicky Austin and her three siblings, and Maggy Hamilton, an orphan. Plot Vicky Austin's noisy, loving, mostly-happy family is disrupted when the family's honorary uncle dies in a plane crash. His co-pilot was also killed, leaving behind a ten-year-old daughter, Maggy, who has no one to care for her. The Austins take Maggy in, and she proves to be a spoiled, troubled only child who had very little family life. Maggy encourages Vicky's sister Suzy to misbehave, which makes everyone's life more difficult. ''Meet the Austins'' is largely Episode, episodic; each chapter covers a specific incident such as Vicky's bicycle accident or a family vacation. Throughout the book, Vicky comments on the changes her family experiences during this time, and the reader sees her growing self-awareness. Although Vicky will later appear in three novels th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Point Of View (literature)
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot (the series of events). Narration is a required element of all written stories ( novels, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.), with the function of conveying the story in its entirety. However, narration is merely optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows, and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action. The narrative mode encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story develops their narrator and narration: * ''Narrative point of view, perspective,'' or ''voice'': the choice of grammatical person used by the narrator to establish whether or not the narrator and t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kything
''A Wind in the Door'' is a young adult science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle. It is a companion book to ''A Wrinkle in Time'' and part of the Time Quintet. Plot summary 14-year-old Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace, a 6-year-old genius bullied at school by the other children. The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal, Mr. Jenkins, who often disciplined Meg, and Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family. Meg tries to enlist Jenkins's help in protecting her brother but is unsuccessful. Later, Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease that is leaving him short of breath. Their mother, a microbiologist, suspects it may be a disorder of his mitochondria and his mitochondria's farandolae. (The farandolae are micro-organelles inside mitochondria that exist in the Time Quintet fantasy universe.) One afternoon, Charles Wallace tells Meg of a "drive of dragons" in their backyard, where he and Meg th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression ''thought-transference''.Glossary of Parapsychological terms – Telepathy – . Retrieved December 19, 2006. Telepathy experiments have historically been criticized for a lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no good evidence that telepathy e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Adam Eddington
Adam Eddington III is a major character in three young adult novels by Madeleine L'Engle. A marine biology student, he is the protagonist of ''The Arm of the Starfish'' ( 1965), and a reluctant romantic love interest for Vicky Austin in '' A Ring of Endless Light'' ( 1980), a romantic relationship that continues in ''Troubling a Star'' (1994). He is one of three characters to have major appearances in both L'Engle's O'Keefe family series of books and her Austin family series. Major traits Adam is highly intelligent, with a strong aptitude for science, especially marine biology, a field in which Adam's uncle and namesake made a name for himself a generation earlier. Although he describes himself as "not a churchgoer", he sang in a church choir as a child and retains a strong moral sense along with a questioning, philosophical nature. Initially somewhat naive, Adam unwisely trusts a beautiful young woman in ''The Arm of the Starfish'', which results in the death of a friend. Beca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A Ring Of Endless Light
''A Ring of Endless Light'' is a 1980 novel by Madeleine L'Engle. The book tells of teenager Vicky Austin and her struggle to understand life and significance in the universe as she deals with her dying grandfather, while at the same time finding true romantic love. The title originates from a phrase in the seventeenth-century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan's poem "The World." Plot summary Fifteen-year-old Vicky Austin and her family are spending the summer on Seven Bay Island with her maternal grandfather, who is dying of leukemia. At the beginning of the story, Vicky attends a funeral for Commander Rodney, a family friend. Also present are the commander's wife, his sons Leo and Jacky who own a launch boat business, and Adam Eddington, an intern at the Island's research base and friend of Vicky's brother, John. After the funeral Vicky encounters Zachary Gray, her boyfriend from the previous summer whom her family does not particularly like. She soon learns that Zachary indirectly c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Young Unicorns
''The Young Unicorns'' (1968), ) is the title of a young adult suspense novel by American writer Madeleine L'Engle. It is the third novel about the Austin family, taking place between the events of '' The Moon by Night'' (1963) and '' A Ring of Endless Light'' (1980). Unlike those two novels and ''Meet the Austins'' (1960), it does not center on Vicky Austin specifically, but on a family friend, Josiah "Dave" Davidson. Plot summary As the story opens, the Austin family has settled in a New York City apartment after the events of ''The Moon by Night'', and made some friends; blind young pianist Emily Gregory and Josiah "Dave" Davidson, who helps Emily get around. Emily is studying under the tutelage of the passionate, leonine Emmanuel Theotocopulous, better known as Mr. Theo. Canon Tallis, newly arrived at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine after the events of ''The Arm of the Starfish'', meets the Austin children and their friends just as they encounter an anachronistic Gen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous U.S. state and the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated Administrative division, subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous Statistical area (United States), urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7million residents and the latter having over 9.6million. Sacramento, California, Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the List of largest California cities by population, most populous city in the state and the List of United States cities by population, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zachary Gray
Madeleine L'Engle, an American novelist, diarist and poet, produced over twenty novels, beginning with '' The Small Rain'' (1945), and continuing into the 1990s with '' A Live Coal in the Sea'' (1996). Many of her fictional characters appeared in more than one novel, sometimes in more than one series of novels. Other major characters are the protagonists of a single title. This article provides information about L'Engle's most notable characters. In a family tree chart first published inside the front cover of ''Many Waters'' (1986, ), L'Engle divided her major characters into categories she called "chronos" and " kairos", two Greek terms for different concepts of time. The stories of the Austin family take place in a chronos environment, which L'Engle defined as "ordinary, wrist-watch, alarm-clock time.". These are presented in a primarily realistic framework, though occasionally with elements that might be regarded as science fiction. Kairos, the framework in which the stories ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Camping
Camping is an outdoor activity involving overnight stays away from home, either without shelter or using basic shelter such as a tent, or a recreational vehicle. Typically, participants leave developed areas to spend time outdoors in more natural ones in pursuit of activities providing them enjoyment or an educational experience. The night (or more) spent outdoors distinguishes camping from day-tripping, picnicking, and other similarly short-term recreational activities. Camping as a recreational activity became popular among elites in the early 20th century. With time, it grew in popularity among other socioeconomic classes. Modern campers frequent publicly owned natural resources such as national and state parks, wilderness areas, and commercial campgrounds. In a few countries, such as Sweden and Scotland, public camping is legal on privately held land as well. Camping is a key part of many youth organizations around the world, such as Scouting, which use it to teach bot ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital is Hartford and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Historically the state is part of New England as well as the tri-state area with New York and New Jersey. The state is named for the Connecticut River which approximately bisects the state. The word "Connecticut" is derived from various anglicized spellings of "Quinnetuket”, a Mohegan-Pequot word for "long tidal river". Connecticut's first European settlers were Dutchmen who established a small, short-lived settlement called House of Hope in Hartford at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers. Half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the firs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |