Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Age Recommended: 11 and up

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L’Engle was one of my favorites in the quintet. The beginning was a little confusing because the story was set one generation in the future and the main character was Meg and and Calvin’s daughter, Polly, but the rest of the book was extraordinary.

The time gate has been opened again at the arrival of Polly O’Keefe. Polly has been at her grandparent’s house for a couple of weeks and her life has followed the same routine. One day, when she steps out to the stargazing rock, she looks back at the house. Wait, where is the house?

The place where the house had stood, was now an open plain and the area in front of Polly had turned into a forest. Polly had no idea where she was and she knew that it was up to her to find the way back. She waited for what seemed like hours and walked back to where the house had been.

Poof! The house appeared! She looked back and saw the stargazing rock, not any type of forest. Polly tried to convince herself that that was all a dream, but when she went to the pool later in the day, a girl visited her and claimed that she was from three thousand years ago and that a time gate had been opened. Polly was about to open her mouth but a noise at the door made the girl run away.

Zachary, a guy that Polly had met in Greece last summer came to visit and broke the news to her that his heart was weak and that he had only a little tie to live. Polly felt bad for him and told him all about the time gate only to find him gone the next morning. She looked around and saw that he had asked the enemy tribe’s healer to heal him. The healer required blood and sacrifice, human sacrifice as pay. The people thought that sacrificing a person would bring rain. Zachary was willing to give up a life to save his own, even if it was Polly’s life…