n  “We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.”n

If you want to try out a science fiction book, and you're a beginner then I'd recommend this one. Even though this is considered a YA book, I think it's more suited to be a middle grade one. It was well written with a conspicuous plot, but it didn't really leave me wanting for more. It was mediocre. So, that explains the three stars.

n  “Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself."n

A wrinkle in time is a heartwarming and adventurous story about travel through time and space. Meg and Charles and their classmate Calvin travel through space and time in search of Meg's and Charles's father. Their father is a scientist who was trying to fight an evil shadow that was often seen looming over the Earth's surface. However, his plans failed and he's now held prisoner, on a mysterious planet, by evil forces.

n  “There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.”n

The three children with the help of three Celestials, Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit fight the evil forces and restore happiness.
I also loved the philosophical aspects of this book.
The author brings out the strengths and weaknesses of every character in a beautiful way. The travel to different planets made me look at earth in a different point of view as I found myself visualizing myself as a Celestial. I loved all the characters for different reasons.

n  “We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”n

CHARACTERS

Meg
Meg is determined to save her father, but her anxiousness blinded her from solving other problems that arose.

Charles
Charles is a very clever boy but he let his pride get in the way, and it didn't turn out that well for him.

Calvin O'Keefe
Calvin was kind and helpful when Meg yearned for warmth and affection. He was unwilling to take risks.

They were the perfect trio who were ready to fight anything that got in their way!

Will I continue reading this series?
Yes, I might. The book didn't really end on a cliffhanger so I might pick up the second book after a few days.

n  “Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”n

About: A Wrinkle in Time is a children’s science fiction written by Madeleine L’Engle. It was published on 3/15/1973 by Yearling Books, paperback, 211 pages. The genres are children’s, science fiction, and fantasy. This book is intended for readers ages 10 to 14. This book belongs to a series of 5 books.

My Experience: I started reading A Wrinkle in Time on 3/13/18 and finished it on 3/16/18. This book is fantastic! I love the characters! They all have unique personalities. I like the twin’s good sense of humor. I like their easy going intelligent parents and the oddities of Meg and Charles Wallace. I like that despite the characters being super smart, that they seem to have a disability in others. Charles Wallace is a genius but he didn’t speak until he was 4 years old. Meg is excellent at math but she is a trouble student at school. It’s a good reminder that even geniuses are still not perfect. I read this book to watch the remake of A Wrinkle in Time. I have seen the old version of the movie years ago and some events came back to me as I read this book.

This book is told in the third person point of view following Margaret (Meg) Murry as she experiences one of the lowest days of her life. Her grades are suffering, the mean girls at school are saying she’s acting like a baby, and she has gotten herself into a fight to protect her youngest brother, Charles Wallace though her middle twin brothers, Sandy and Dennys weren’t appreciative of her efforts. Now the storm is scaring her. The storm brought in one of their new strange neighbors, Mrs. Whatsit. To Meg and her mom’s surprise, Charles Wallace already gotten acquainted with the new neighbor. Mrs. Whatsit said a tesseract is real and it brought on a whole new adventure for Meg and Charles Wallace. This adventure involves rescuing their father, a renowned physicist. With the help of Mrs. Whatsit and her two friends Mrs.Which and Mrs. Who and Meg’s classmate, Calvin, they were able to travel by tesser to far away planets.

A well written story, this book is full of adventures and wholesome characters for readers. I love the illustrations in this book that explains how traveling through tesser works. I like the mathematical references and the mentioning of Einstein. I like how Meg’s dad spent time to teach Meg math shortcuts and the periodic table of elements. I like Charles Wallace and his interest in higher learning at such a young age. I like the glimpse of Camazotz’s citizens, how everyone doing the same thing in a rhythmic motion. This book has a good family dynamic and the curiosity of the mind and I highly recommend everyone to read this book!

Pro: fast paced, page turner, easy to read, family oriented, other planets,

Con: none

I rate it 5 stars!

***Disclaimer: I borrowed this book from my local public library and my opinions are honest.

xoxo,
Jasmine at www.howusefulitis.wordpress.com for more details

One of these days, I will finally realize that I am in fact an adult, and will stop wanting to recapture an alternate childhood. Even if Hollywood insists on flashy (re)adaptions of every children's book in existence. Damn you!



The easiest and most natural thing to do when faced with failure, is to pinpoint a culprit. Preferably someone other than one's own self, so I choose my country's school system. If you go by its compulsory reading list, it's clear that a heavily depressed child/teenager is what it takes to ace Literature class.

The reading list boasts of such lovely stories like :
- baby is eaten by eagles
- magic sheep to witness last will of suicidal shepherd
- mythical star gets its heart broken by uncaring princess
- materialistic peasant climbs over everyone and everything to get a bit of land
- OR, my personal favorite: French boy breaks innocent Indian girl's heart - if only because the lack of any tragic deaths.



So trust me when I tell you that I'm positively green with envy, when others get a frigging space-fairy-tale to analyze. Not only does it boast of an interesting title (A Wrinkle in Time), but its author also parades around with an absolutely fabulous (pen?)name (Madeleine L'Engle). Add to that a story that manages to coast by with minimal religious references. Meaning... if noone explicitly mentions God or Jesus, I can convince myself that things have nothing to do with them.

What I'm saying is that I should've positively ADORED this book! So feeling nothing but boredom and irritation, understandably put me in quite a foul mood.

It started out well enough with the heroine being bullied for being different, but before I could even grasp the entirety of Meg's woes, she gets a huge pile of insta-love thrown her way, space-travel, a villain whose endgame never gets explained... all wrapped in a slew of utterly confusing events, peppered with as many weird characters as 200 pages can hold.

Score: 1/5 stars

I was initially holding out some hope that some pretty visuals would at least endear the movie to me, but I lasted less than 10 minutes. In its defense, I was on a plane, where my attention span is even lower than usual.

4,25 stars - English paperback - read again after 30 years

Wow. So utterly profound and beautiful. A book with a message that will stay with me forever... To choose love over fear and to remember that I am loved. That love is the greatest gift of all. That it has the power to save me and deliver me from darkness.


...At the end, even Meg.

Meg is having trouble coping. It is hard being a teenager. It seems the only thing she likes in school is math. She is rather hyper-sensitive and temperamental. She is awkward socially and rather invisible among her teachers.

And yet her twin brothers are quite normal. Her baby brother Charles is gifted. Her father, known for working on a top secret mission with the government, hasn't been heard from in years.

And then...4 remarkable people burst into Meg's life and things change. An adventure ensues.

Years later, and Meg's character and her quirkiness still feels current. Relatable.

At the time, the book was almost not published because they didn't know how to categorize it. We can now consider it as magical realism or fantasy or a little bit of science fiction.

it has even been made into a film.

Any way you look at this story, it is an opportunity for children to imagine possibility and celebrate their uniqueness.

This is a beautifully told story that is basically about love. Important messages about family, friendship, being different, and standing up for what's right. Sci-fi for kids. It says 12 & up but most 9 to 11 year olds enjoy it also. L'Engle introduces concepts from science, philosophy, music, etc., with great imagination. And it's been one of my favorite books since I was 9 and my 4th grade teacher read it to the class. Then my 5th grade teacher read it to us. And then I bought the book for myself, and I still have that copy. I'm always surprised when people are not as enthusiastic as I am about this book. I always cry with emotion at exactly the same place near the end of the book...won't give anything away here. I reread this one every few years and it's a special experience each time.

Oh, and I so love the original book cover art that's on the book I own. Leaves all to the imagination unlike the various newer covers.

5+++++ Stars!!!!

“A Wrinkle in Time”. How can I never have read this before??! Have I been living under a rock my entire life?

This was utterly DELIGHTFUL, Amazing, Funny, Scary, Brilliant & Crazy Bold. In short, I loved it. Ok, and I admit, I didn’t read it. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Hope Davis - and she was amazing. That being said, thank you Madeiline L’Engle, - “A Wrinkle in TIme” was mystical, magical and nothing short of fantastical.

Thirteen year-old Meg Murry and her little brother, Charles Wallace end up going on a little trip.. (without their Mum or their siblings), to the 5th dimension. Mind you, they don’t go alone. They go with Mrs. What-Its, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Witch and a young man named Calvin. Yes, the 5th dimension exists my friends and the trip takes a mere second or two (see, I knew it!). It’s a terrifying trip, yet they go nonetheless. Why do they go you ask? To find and save Meg’s father, a scientist, who has been trapped on Camazotz for years. With help of Calvin, Mrs. What’s Its, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Witch and a friend she encounters named Aunt Beast, Meg is sent off to do the impossible.

Camazotz is an evil planet however, and Camazotz is being controlled by “IT” (not Stephen King’s “IT” mind you), and IT controls everyone and everything and if IT gets control of you, there is no getting free. Finding the strength to fight IT takes something special. It takes something that is inside of everyone who is human. Meg just has to find it.

“A Wrinkle in Time” surprised me. I didn’t have any idea how much I would love it. It was amusing, frightening, intense, intelligent, oh so magical. I simply adored it. I wanted to get to it before the movie came out in a few months and I am so glad I did. If for some reason, you are like me and have never read it, I highly recommend you either read or listen to the audiobook. You will not be sorry. A Wrinkle in Time will leave you breathless. One minute a huge smile will break out on your face, and you will be grinning from ear to ear and then next you will be clenching your teeth, scared for Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin, hoping against hope that all will turn out ok.

Published on Goodreads, Amazon and Twitter on 10.15.17.

Meg Murry, nuestra protagonista, tiene problemas para adaptarse en la escuela, es difícil adivinar que sus padres son científicos. Su padre desapareció tiempo atrás en extrañas circunstancias, pero la mamá no ha perdido la esperanza de volver a verlo. Su hermano pequeño, Charles, es un no prodigio; su mente posee una percepción excepcional que le permite más allá de las apariencias. Es esa habilidad la que les permitirá encontrarse con las señoras Qué, Cuál y Quién, y descubrir que detrás de ellas se esconde un increíble secreto, "la arruga en el tiempo" que puede llevarlos a otros mundos. Justo lo necesario para emprender la búsqueda de su padre perdido, ¿no creen? En el espacio exterior no existe el aire, así que respira hondo y prepárate a viajar junto a Meg, Charlie y su amigo Calvin para averiguarlo.
Ese libro es un clásico inclasificable de la literatura juvenil. Me encantó

4★
“Meg looked up at her mother, half in loving admiration, half in sullen resentment. It was not an advantage to have a mother who was a scientist and a beauty as well. Mrs Murry’s flaming red hair, creamy skin, and violet eyes with long dark lashes, seemed even more spectacular in comparison with Meg’s outrageous plainness.”

Ah, poor Meg, convinced she is plain, not so much because of her beautiful mother as because of the popular girls at school who make fun of her. They are among those who have been spreading the gossip that Meg’s father ran off with someone and abandoned his family.

Meg knows he wouldn’t do that, and her mother refers to his eventually coming home. He worked for the government and was often away, so they believe he’s been delayed somehow, and Meg is determined to find out. She is independent and quite different from the other teens in her class.

Her little brother, Charles Wallace, didn’t speak during his earliest years and is considered stupid, but it’s obvious he is unusually perceptive, hyperalert to people’s thoughts and feelings.

“‘School awful again today?’ he asked after a while.

‘Yes. I got sent to Mr Jenkins. He made snide remarks about father.’

Charles Wallace nodded sagely. ‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

Charles Wallace shook his head. ‘I can’t quite explain. You tell me, that’s all.’

‘But I never say anything. You just seem to know.’

‘Everything about you tells me,’ Charles said.”

The two of them have decided they will visit the local haunted house, because they are pretty sure they know who has been stealing sheets off the neighbours’ clotheslines. They walk through the woods one evening with their big dog, and as they near the haunted house, the dog begins to bark furiously.

Here is where we meet Calvin (who becomes our third musketeer, so to speak), who is a good-looking, popular athlete a couple of years ahead of Meg in school. Charles Wallace demands to know why he is at the haunted house. Calvin is escaping his family.

“‘I’m third from the top of eleven kids. I’m a sport.’

At that Charles Wallace grinned widely. ‘So ’m I.’

‘I don’t mean like in baseball,’ Calvin said.

‘Neither do I.’

‘I mean like in biology,’ Calvin said suspiciously.

‘A change in gene,’ Charles Wallace quoted, ‘resulting in the appearance in the offspring of a character which is not present in the parents but which is potentially transmissible to its offspring.’

‘What gives around here?’ Calvin asked. ‘I was told you couldn’t talk.’

‘Thinking I’m a moron gives people something to feel smug about,’ Charles Wallace said. ‘Why should I disillusion them?’”

Calvin goes on to explain he had a strong compulsion to come to this house. He said he doesn’t often feel like this, but when he does, he follows it. Charles Wallace can see that he and Calvin are on a similar wavelength, but he explains to Calvin that Meg is “not one thing or the other”, which annoys Meg, of course.

These are our three main characters. In the haunted house are three other characters, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which, who start out sounding like fairy godmothers of old, but are much more interesting and complex. So is the story. These ‘women’ help the children find their way into another realm, travelling through space and time. Here they go.

“ Did the shadow fall across the moon or did the moon simply go out, extinguished as abruptly and completely as a candle? There was still the sound of leaves, a terrified, terrifying rushing. All light was gone. Darkness was complete. Suddenly the wind was gone, and all sound. Meg felt that Calvin was being torn from her. When she reached for him her fingers touched nothing.

She screamed out, ‘Charles!’ and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know. The word was flung back down her throat and she choked on it.

She was completely alone.

She had lost the protection of Calvin’s hand. Charles was nowhere, either to save or to turn to. She was alone in a fragment of nothingness. No light, no sound, no feeling. Where was her body? She tried to move in her panic, but there was nothing to move. Just as light and sound had vanished, she was gone, too. The corporeal Meg simply was not.”

As you can see, it gets quite scary, as they battle a dark thing, a dark shadow, an evil dark force of some kind.

This was written for young readers, and had I read it as a child, I would have been completely absorbed, I’m sure. Today’s young readers have been exposed to so many modern time travel and world-building stories that this may not have quite the same magic pull that it would have had back then.

Meg is still a great heroine, a clever, bright girl who won’t take no for an answer. Little brother Charles Wallace is a delight (and, I assume, named for the two people to whom the book is dedicated, Charles Wadsworth Camp and Wallace Collin Franklin. Calvin was a nice addition, since he has a bit of age and presence that the children don’t.

There were some religious overtones or undertones that gave me pause, but not enough to worry me. Good fun, and I’m glad I finally read it.

This Newbery Award winner was the first novel by the prolific L'Engle (1918-2007) that I ever read; but although I'd heard of her before, I didn't discover her work for myself until I was in my 40s. That I liked it as an adult is indicative; it was marketed to younger readers, and has main characters who are, I'd guess, young teens (another is just five years old), but it isn't at all shallow or juvenile in its characterizations, plotting, or general execution. (L'Engle herself has stated that when she writes, she simply tells a story without picturing the listeners as any particular age, and leaves it to her publishers to market it as they choose.) Adults can certainly appreciate this one.

Two or three generations of would-be gurus of writing technique have held up the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night" as a supposed textbook example of a poor beginning for a fictional work (unfairly, in my opinion, since there's nothing intrinsically wrong either with opening the tale in such a setting, or with starting by calling attention to it!). That L'Engle deliberately picked that sentence to start this novel says something about her audacity and disdain for convention. That the novel in question then went on to win a coveted major literary award says a lot about her writing skills.

Basically, this tale sends young Meg and her schoolmate Calvin, along with Meg's precociously bright little brother, traveling to other worlds in an effort to find and rescue her missing father (who's a brilliant scientist, as is her mother). The means of this travel is a tesseract, the titular "wrinkle in time" posited in 1888 by British mathematician Charles Howard Hinton (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract ). Although L'Engle's science fiction isn't typically associated with the genre's "hard" tradition, the science here is legitimate. (For some further discussion of it, with particular reference to this novel, check out https://geekdad.com/2014/03/tesseracts/ .) But the author's main interest isn't in imparting a science lesson. As in all great literature in any genre, her fundamental concerns are psychological and moral/philosophical --and in this case spiritual, because while L'Engle's Christian content here is subtly expressed, she was an evangelical Christian whose worldview shapes her work, here as elsewhere. (By her own statement, for instance, she viewed Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit as angels; and it isn't hard for Christian readers to identify the malevolent cosmic entity designated here as the Dark Thing.) The characters' real challenges are moral and spiritual, and have to be fought within themselves.

As a side note, it's profoundly unfortunate that this work has sometimes been denounced, not so much by secularist critics as by avowedly Christian reviewers, who imagine it to be inimical to the faith (a reaction that never ceased to amaze the author, during her lifetime). Briefly, one main ground of attack have been that Jesus is cited (first) in a list of those from our planet who have been fighters against the evil and darkness of the Dark Thing --supposedly, this reduces Jesus' uniqueness. Suffice it to say that I had no such negative reaction in reading that passage in the book; I took it as a very pro-Jesus affirmation, and I think 99.999% of serious readers would. (Generally speaking, the New Testament calls upon humans to be co-fighters with Jesus against evil.) The other complaint is that a character called the Happy Medium uses a crystal ball for scrying (locating missing persons or objects in the present); those who object to this equate it with the kind of divination (foretelling future events) forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:11. But humans are banned from trying to foretell the future because it's knowledge that belongs to God and isn't ours to know, unless He shares it with us. The location of present-day lost persons or objects is an entirely different category of knowledge; it certainly isn't forbidden to humans. (If it were, it would be a sin, for instance, to look for misplaced eyeglasses, or to try to locate missing children!) This doesn't mean that scrying is a technique that actually works for such purposes --this is fiction, after all!- it simply means that if incantational magic DID work, this wouldn't be a morally illegitimate purpose for it.

As Goodreads indicates, this is the first entry in a five-book series. I've never actually pursued the latter any further; but this 1991 printing of the book has an accompanying genealogy of the Murry and O'Keefe families that appear in the series, as well as a list of L'Engle characters in the broader Kairos series (which includes this one) and which books they appear in. (Interestingly, although I'd never noticed it before, it turns out that although The Other Side of the Sun --which I've also read and liked, though I haven't reviewed it yet-- isn't part of the Kairos series, Stella and Theron's children and grandson do figure in some books of the latter. It's a small world! :-) )

This book will outlive time itself.

A Wrinkle in Time has that Thing I can't describe, this special element that I haven't seen in any other book. There's magic, there's physics, there's fantasy, and friendship and loyalty and courage and anything else you can imagine. This is that book. It's the book you will read over and over again, not because of the intricate plot or complex world-building, not even because of the characters, but because of the special Thing it contains.

I can't fathom the thought that I went a whole six years without rereading this. This book is so so so so special, and if you haven't read it, then damn I feel bad for you. I feel like I just went on an intergalactic journey with some of the most brilliant minds of our time.

There's a certain divide, or a line that my favorite authors can't cross with female protagonists, and that is their personalities and the way they are portrayed, and how they interact with other characters. Basically, I despise weak female protagonists. When I read this novel for the first time in sixth grade, I hadn't yet formed a solid opinion on Meg Murry, because I wasn't picky and I basically read anything that was given to me. But now? I just ... I love that bitch. With my whole entire heart.

Meg Murry is a frail, awkward, odd, intelligent girl that is faced with the daunting task of saving her father from The Dark Thing, AKA "IT" on another dimension called Camazotz. In the first 75% of the novel, it is evident that Meg Murry is very afraid. She isn't used to stepping out of her comfort zone, has always lived a normal, quiet life, and does not think she is at all capable of anything related to saving her father, let alone an entire dimension. And I think, overall, that is what makes her character growth so inimitable.

I think the thing we love the most about our favorite characters is not that they start off with a sturdy strength inside them, but that they are full of faults and flaws that they eventually overcome them. Why? Because it makes us proud. Because we, as imperfect humans, are given something to relate to.

That is why Meg Murry's journey is a special one. I'm tired of reading about characters that seem to know exactly what they're doing, where they're going, and who they are. In this book, I was able to see Meg's growth and how she learned to rely on herself, how she learned to stop putting her responsibilities in other people's hands, and how she learned to do things for herself. I loved watching how she learned to stop hating herself, and that she was worthy of love and worthy of every happy feeling in the world. She is not perfect, she is not a saint, she is none of that. And she has accepted that inevitable truth with all of her heart.

--

"I wanted you to do it all for me," Meg said. "I wanted everything to be all easy and simple ... So I tried to pretend that it was all your fault ... because I was scared, and I didn't want to have to do anything myself."

--

Meg wanted to reach out and grab Calvin's hand, but it seemed that ever since they had begun their journeyings she had been looking for a hand to hold, so she stuffed her fists into her pockets and walked along behind the two boys. I've got to be brave, she said to herself. I will be.

--

Growth comes in different forms, different seasons, different times, and no matter how infinitesimal Meg's may seem, it is part of her journey all the same.

The definition of a strong female protagonist is not one that has been strong from the beginning. It is one that has endured more than any could bear, one that has fallen, stood up, and kept going. These strong protagonists come in many shapes and forms, and Meg Murry is now added to my long list of favorites.

I automatically fell in love with the insta-love, insta-care, and insta-protectiveness. (I just made all of these terms up because I am cool.) Normally, I hate insta-love. Hate it with my entire being. But I just couldn't bring myself to feel any irritation towards it in this book because it is so well written and so lovely and just everything I needed today. I love how Calvin is immediately protective of Meg and he won't let anyone hurt her, how he refuses to let her cry on her own. I love how Meg has known Aunt Beast for approximately a few hours and departs from her arms with tears in her eyes, and "I love you," on the edge of her lips. I love that I love it so much, and I have no clue why, and in all honesty, if I read this in another book it would be completely, utterly weird, and I know I would hate it immediately. But this book ... it’s speshul bro

Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, Mrs Which, Charles Wallace, Mrs Murry, Calvin

why
are the characters
so beautiful
so wonderful
i can't explain it
i can't comprehend
- an exquisite, sad, lovestruck poem written by me

In every book, there are characters I would die for, and characters I would kill. Miraculously, A Wrinkle in Time has yanked the strings of my heart and has made me numb to all the hatred in the world. I can't bring myself to hate anyone in this book. Not even "IT", the antagonist. Why? BECAUSE IT'S WRITTEN SO WELL. I have absolutely no complaints about any of the characters whatsoever. They are all beautiful beans (except the Prime BitchCoordinator).

If I had to complain about one thing, it would be the method in which Meg defeats "IT". The love-conquers-all bit is a lil cheesy, which is completely understandable, seeing as how this book was published in 1962, and everything was cheesy back then. Overall, the plot had me at the edge of my seatbed the entire time, and still, six years later, I love it just the same and even more.

I know how sparse my five star ratings can be, but this book will always deserve its five stars. I don't think it will ever go down. This is a book that everyone has to read, because it is beautiful and heartbreaking (in how beautiful it is), and that ending, oh my god that ending, that last fucking page just shattered my soul because it. was. written. so. well.

Hopefully you get my point and are now rushing to the nearest library to check out this book. If you are not, The Dark Thing shall reawaken from the depths of the fifth dimension and will come find you. (I shall set it upon you.)