A Wrinkle in Time

By /

Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Illustrator: None

© Date: 1962
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers
Pages: 211
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: No
Publisher Recommended Age: 10-14 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No

Summary from Book: It is a dark and stormy night. Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother are in the kitchen for a midnight snack when a most disturbing visitor arrives.

“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger tells them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”

Meg’s father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit and overpower the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?

 

Note: This review is done from memory. I originally read this a short bit ago.

Page Pig Thoughts: Admittedly, watching the movie years ago made me curious what the book was like. The snippets of the movie that I remembered initially spoiled some of the book images, but fortunately, I didn’t remember much. Which means that the book basically stands alone in my mind.

While the story has some lovely concepts of love, equality, and freedom, I found the story creepy. The ending was so truncated that it made everything feel like a bit of a dream sequence. The writing style made the reading feel like a slog for a good portion of the story beginnings. The thing that really sticks with me after reading this one is the creepiness of IT and planet Camazotz. I’m not sure what made it more creepy, the fact that my brain is trained to read IT as Information Technology or the disembodied brain bit. I was happy to finish this book and will not be seeking out any other related materials anytime soon.

Use caution with younger or sensitive readers that may find the concept of IT too creepy (Items of Interest #14 below may be particularly useful).

Family Unit: Margaret Murry (aka Meg) lives with her younger twin siblings Sandy and Dennys (10 years old), younger brother Charles Wallace (5 years old), and their mother. Their father has been missing for a long while.

Conflict/Social Issues:

  1. Meg feels like she does everything wrong. She hasn’t been doing well in school and has been struggling to deal with the emotions of her father being missing.
  2. Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace need to fight off the dark thing/shadow to rescue father, Mr. Murry.
  3. IT tries to pull everyone into its rhythm on Camazotz.

Positive Items:

  1. Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which help Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace see outside their usual world and give them gifts to help them on their journey.
  2. The creatures on the planet that Meg, Calvin, and father arrive on are kind. They demonstrate that life elsewhere may not look like humans, but they can be compassionate and more advanced in ways that we normally don’t think about.
  3. Love is highlighted as one of the most beautiful gifts that we all have.

Items of Interest:

  1. Meg has amazing math skills but not much patience for any other subjects.
  2. People think that Charles Wallace is not very bright because he didn’t talk until 4 years old. He started talking in complete sentences and with clean/clear words. He has an uncanny ability to read the thoughts and emotions of Meg and her mother.
  3. Mother has a chemistry lab attached to the house for her research.
  4. Father is a PhD and was researching the possibility of traveling through the fifth dimension of time using a tesseract.
  5. Calvin (14 years old) is one of eleven children. His mother does not seem overly kind, and there is a vision flash at one point of a toothless, stray haired woman stirring a pot and threatening her child with a wooden spoon. Calvin gets feelings about places he needs to be and things that he needs to do, which is how Meg and Charles Wallace run across him in the forest.
  6. After interacting with Meg and Charles Wallace, Calvin realizes that they are not as dumb as others believe. He says that he would like to be a moron too if that means that he can have gifts like theirs.
  7. Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which overseee the children’s travels. They are not human, but pretend to be witches. They are described later in the book as a sort of guardian angel.
  8. Meg and Calvin develop a sort of crushing/romantic relationship, but interact in a thoughtful/kind/intimate friend sort of way.
  9. A black shadowy thing has been slowly taking over the universe. Father has been fighting the shadow, and Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin must fight it to rescue him. They watch a star give up her life to fight the shadow.
  10. Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which take the children to Camazotz and leave a gift with each of them. The children then need to find their own way around the planet to rescue Meg and Charles Wallace’s father.
  11. Camazotz is overseen by a Central Intelligence. The residents all fill out the appropriate paperwork for everything. All people follow the same rhythm and behaviors. They watch a boy bounce a ball to a different rhythm and later see him in Central Central Intelligence being forced to submit to the rhythm of everyone else.
  12. The children come across a red eyed man sitting on a chair. He seems to contain all the coldness of the Black Thing and talks without moving his mouth. Whatever he says and thinks do not come from him, he is not a robot, he is just a puppet of sorts. He attempts to get the children to submit to the will of the planet’s rhythm. He arranges for the children to eat the food of the planet, which is synthetic and with mental conditioning, the synthetic food can give the illusion that you are eating a roast turkey dinner.
  13. Charles Wallace gives in to the planet’s rhythm that is powered by a brain in an attempt to discover what is going on and how to rescue his father. However, the brain is only interested in absorbing another being into it’s rhythm.
  14. A huge, disembodied, living brain is the mastermind of everything on the planet and is referred to as IT. IT takes care of all illness and deformity, but murder would be a primitive word for how people are put to sleep when they have a discomfort such as a runny nose or sore throat. There really isn’t much of a need for parental figures with IT overseeing everything. IT ensures that nobody suffers or is unhappy, Meg observes that no one is happy either. IT is not used to people trying to resist it.
  15. Father has been trapped in a cell until he submits to IT and its rhythm. Meg figures out how to get into the cell to talk with her father. He figures out how to get himself and Meg out of the cell. Meg is disappointed that her father is not able to fix everything once he is released. He is just a person bumbling around without all the answers.
  16. Charles Wallace, while still under IT’s spell, takes Meg, Calvin, and father to see IT so that they will fall in line. They all work to stay out of IT’s spell.
  17. Everybody on Camazotz is exactly alike. Meg realizes that like and equal are not the same thing at all.
  18. Calvin realizes that he and Meg are about to fall into IT’s spell and shouts at father to tesser them off the planet.
  19. Meg, Calvin, and father arrive on a different planet without Charles Wallace. Meg cannot believe that her father left Charles WAllace behind. Meg is very weak because they tessered through the shadow since father is not very experienced at tesser travel. Meg was the most susceptible to the shadow’s coldness.
  20. The new planet is rather dull and colorless and inhabited by creatures that Meg calls beasts with multiple arms, fur, and no eyes. The beasts do not see and do not have language like humans, but are clearly more aware of everything going on around them because they feel rather deeply. Human speech is primitive to them and humans seem hindered by sight because the beasts are much more capable. One of the beasts heals Meg from her injuries from traveling through the shadow. The beasts help them because they are also trying to fight the shadow.
  21. Meg realizes that she needs to be the one to go back and rescue Charles Wallace. She has one thing that IT does not have, which is love. She can go back to Camazotz and love Charles Wallace. Her love will set him free.
  22. In the moment when Charles Wallace is free from IT, he and Meg arrive back home with Calvin, the twins, mother, and father.

Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):

  • A Wind in the Door
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet
  • Many Waters
  • An Acceptable Time
  • Looks like Intergalactic P.S. 3 uses the same characters
  • Also looks like there is a graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time now
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