A Wrinkle in Time

I decided to re-read some L'Engle because someone whose opinion I admire was recently talking about how disappointed she was when she re-read them as an adult...

As a kid/teen I adored this book and would have given it 6 stars if that was possible. As an adult, I am more aware of its faults but still loved it. I still adore Meg (in this book... I'll leave the debate about adult!Meg for if I ever review The Arm of the Starfish) and this time around I found myself really really enjoying Mrs Murry. I'm intrigued by her story and wish there was more. I still think Meg&Calvin are one of my favourite literary couples (up there with Anne&Gilbert) and I'm still ambivalent about Charles Wallace.

Executive Summary: I never read this one as a child, so it's hard to gauge if I'd have liked it more then. I thought it started much stronger than it finished. 2.5 StarsFull ReviewWith the movie upcoming, I was interested in reading this classic. I thought the premise was pretty interesting, but I found the execution a bit lacking. Traveling between planets by folding time and space seems pretty cool and would have been right up my alley as a kid.I thought that Meg and her brother were both pretty interesting characters, but that the book came across as far to preachy about what children should behave like and with its message of religion. Meg also got kind of bratty for a period of time, and that started to annoy me.The first half of this book had some pretty good worldbuilding, but the second half felt very rushed and the ending left a lot to be desired. I was expecting more plot and by the final chapter I was wondering how things would be wrapped up. In my opinion they weren't so much wrapped up and they were rushed to an abrupt stop.I'm certainly not the target audience for this book, and my agnosticism has me generally uninterested when religion is worked into the narrative. Then again I loved the [b:The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe 100915 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1) C.S. Lewis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353029077s/100915.jpg 4790821] as a kid and this book has far less religion in it than that book.Overall I'm glad I finally read it, but it's not going to be a book I read again.

I have rated this book a 3.5 out of 5 stars and I will discuss it in more detail in my Instagram live discussion with Anthony Andrews however I did develop a soft spot for this novel which defines all categories and simple explanations. This book follows Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace on an epic adventure to find and save Meg and Charles Wallace's father from the darkness. Along the way Meg, Cal and Charles encounter the eccentric characters of Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Witch, learn how to tesser and find themselves on the planet of camazotes. While I didn't fall in love with the story as a whole as I found the adventure elements of the plot very fast, rushed and not very memorable. I really enjoyed the Mrs W characters, Meg, Charles and Calvin and I loved the meaning behind the story much more than the story itself. This book explores identity, politics, society, feminism, and familiar ties as well as much much more and I can understand which it is such a beloved classic. While I will undoubtedly forget the plot before too long, the characters of Charles, Meg, Mrs Witch, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit will stay with me and my younger self wishes I had met these fabulous characters in my youth!

How many times have I read this book? Ten? Fifteen? I know only that much of the book I already knew by heart.

Meg is a classic gifted kid, brilliant in certain areas, but without a clue as to how to fit in among regular kids. Her little brother, Charles Wallace, is even more precocious. Meg and Charles meet up with three mysterious creatures, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who, and befriend a boy as gifted as they are who has learned to get along, Calvin. Together, they go off in search of Meg and Charles' father and, in the process, have to find a way to fight the Black Thing and IT.

This was the first book I remember wanting to read over and over again when I was a little girl. The sequels somehow didn't satisfy, but I did reread Wrinkle in Time many times.

I didn't love it. Ok, not good, definitely not great. I didn't read this as a kid, so maybe the nostalgia is missing. I liked the beginning it was charming and paced well, but as I read on it read like a skipping stone to me. The author barely touched on the big themes and interesting and unique ideas that she tried to introduce. It came out very flat and two dimensional when it tried to talk to fourth and fifth dimensions. Also, definitely didn't dig the obvious and out of place religious references.

Another reading: I am not going to write about this one formally. My 3rd-grade teacher read this one out loud to us. He read us many books, but I remember this one particularly. My son is in 3rd grade this year, so I thought I would read it to my kids. It did not grab my kids' attention. And when it came to meeting IT, my daughter did not want to continue reading. She does not like scary things, so I respected her decision and stopped reading. I probably would have tried again if it had been a book they were more engaged in. But I think they were tolerating more than enjoying the book.

I went ahead and finished the book to see if I thought I should try to get them back into it but I just didn't think it was necessary so I did not.

The other part is that my 3rd grader came home with Harry Potter 4, which his teacher gave him to read. He was excited about reading that. So we picked that up. I will write about that separately, but again, there are scary passages and my daughter again did not like them. But she was engaged in the book, so when she was too scared, we stopped. And because I had read the book multiple times I only read the passages that would be scary in the middle of the day. (I have lived through being woken up over nightmares.)

So there are ways to try to move forward if kids do not like scary. But as much as I generally like L'Engle, I do find it odd that I am not really that much of a fan of her most well known books.
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Short review: I found the audiobooks (with Madeline L'Engle reading) in our library. It has been well over 20 years since I have read them, but I thought some older fiction was what my brain needed.

This is a beloved book, but it has always been my least favorite of the three. I enjoyed it, but it seemed much shorter, and the ‘action' sequences were much shorter than I remembered. When I read it before, I had not read 1984. But the comparison and contrasting ideas are unmistakable. L'Engle can see a way to win over Totalitarianism because of her belief in Love. I look forward to reading books 4 and 5 since I have never read those. But first on to Wind in the Door.

My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/wrinkle/

I wish I had read this as a kid, but I never did. In fact, I somehow managed to not hear much about it but the title. I think the title was the problem, actually. My mind focused on the “wrinkle” part and for some reason I imagined an old woman's wrinkled face. I remember hearing other kids say they liked it in childhood, but nobody had ever said any more about it. I finally read this book in the last couple years after finally reading about the author and figuring out that it wasn't really about an old woman, and it was beautiful. I wish I'd read it sooner!

An enjoyable book that took me back to my childhood. The main character, Meg, catastrophizes and is not at all patient. Meg's adventure with her brother and friend, Charles Wallace and Calvin, to Camazotz helps her grow as a person. She learns that being different is good because love can only exist between people who are unique.