A Wrinkle in Time (Time #1)

Title: A Wrinkle in Time

Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Publisher: Yearling
Publication Date:May 11th 1999 by Yearling
(first published 1962)
Rating: 3 Stars

Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time.

Meg's father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?-Amazon

A long time ago one of my favorite librarians recommended this book to me when I was bored. At the time I wasn't a big reader and the 200+ pages looked impossible so I'm ashamed to say I never read it. My sister read it for a children's lit class and said she really didn't care for it but since she hates to part with books it's still on her bookshelf. After all these years I finally read it today.

I liked they style of it, it just felt... right. At page 2 I knew it was going to be an interesting book when the main character Meg tackled a boy for insulting her younger brother. I really liked the unique relationship between Meg and Charles Wallace. For a five year old Charles Wallace is scarily mature, he acts like an adult. He seems to act like the older sibling, always taking care of Meg and his mother and knowing when they need someone to talk to. The Mrs. W's were hilarious and mysterious, I loved the names: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. I love Aunt Beast, as little as she was in the book she had this attitude that made her seem so sweet. If I was going to meet an alien she would be probably my second choice(first choice would be the Doctor, but that's a different matter). I also love her race, they way that they didn't see things but knew it by WHAT it was instead what it looked like.

I wish the book would have gotten more into what Calvin and Charles Wallace were and why they were special but it is a series so maybe it goes into that later. I loved the fact that with all the impossible things that happened such as traveling through time and space, meeting aliens and fighting the darkness Christianity and God was still acknowledged by all, even the aliens. For once Science and God were both counted as truth. It felt natural and was very refreshing.

I gave this book 3 Stars because while it was interesting and there was a lot I liked about it I wasn't in love with it.