A WRINKLE IN TIME
By Madeleine L’Engle
Dell Yearling, 1962
Category: Middle Grade Fantasy
Yesterday LOVE TO READ day with the second graders, today COMMUNITY READING day for the fifth graders. There is so much to love about the life of a writer!
I got the invitation to be a Community Reader months ago and my first thought was this: who picks the book? I was sorta hoping it would be me, because, well, I am picky about the books I read. Turns out the teachers and the PTA get to pick the books, but since the teachers and PTA folks around here rock, I got to read one of the most fabulous books on the planet (or off the planet!) … A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle.
I decided to read the first chapter, which introduces the book’s heroine, Meg Murray, and her strange circumstances. Meg’s father, a scientist, has gone away. No one, including Meg’s mother, knows where he is or when he will be back. For reasons Meg can’t grasp, Mrs. Murray is nonchalant about the disappearace. But not Meg. She is frightened. And angry. At the same time. Meg’s confusion only worsens when a mysterious old woman shows up in the Murray kitchen late one dark and stormy night to say “there is such a thing as a tesseract.” Who is Mrs. Whatsit? What is a tesseract? And why does news of its reality unhinge Meg’s mother?
It’s a great chapter. And because we had a little time left, I also read the bit where Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin arrive on Camazotz, the planet where Mr. Murray is trapped. Quite an eerie little scene and one that has haunted me since I first read this book twenty-five years ago.
At the end of my reading, most of the kids said they wanted to hear the rest of Meg’s story. Perhaps they heard something in the confusing reality of Meg’s adolescence that resonated with them, despite the outrageously unreal circumstances of her life? Perhaps the book touched their imaginations the same way it touched mine all those years ago? Not bad for a book published in 1962.
I’ve never read the rest of the books in L’Engles Time Quartet. Has anyone out there read A WIND IN THE DOOR, A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET or MANY WATERS? They are officially called “companions” to A WRINKLE IN TIME, and they are now on my TO READ list. How is it that I adored this book as a kid and never knew it had companions?!