"Tangents" is an idea story built around an analogue theme— in this case the mathematical possibility of a fourth dimension that is to the three dimensional world as the third dimension is to the two dimensional world.

This conceptual framework veers somewhat from Einstein's contention that the fourth dimension is time. The central concept used to develop this theme is the tesseract, likely to be familiar to some readers from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (1962; see separate entry, Vol. 4).

Tuthy defines the tesseract for Pal: It's a four-dimensional analogue of a cube. I'm trying to teach myself to see it in my mind's eye," Tuthy said. "Have you ever tried that?

Pal has not tried it, but his extraordinary talent for making music is about to help him do so.

Pal represents a fundamental figure in literature for young adults, one seen...