First Published: 1962

Rating: Excellent

"It was a dark and stormy night."

It may have a cliched first line, but A Wrinkle in Time is a Newberry Award-winning book that merges science fiction and fantasy and has delighted children and adults alike for years. Meg Murry, the heroine of the novel, is the classic teenage character--desperately trying to find her place in a world where she doesn't seem to fit in. She's smart in a way that isn't really recognized by anyone but her family, which includes her mother, her absent father, her five-year-old genius brother Charles Wallace, and twins Sandy and Dennys.

On that fateful dark and stormy night a tramp--known to Charles Wallace as Mrs. Whatsit--takes refuge in the Murry house. Just before she leaves, Mrs. Whatsit tells Mrs. Murry that there is such a thing as a tesseract, a statement which rattles the usually collected mother.

The next day, Charles Wallance and Meg are taking a walk with Calvin O'Keefe, the school jock, and are drawn to the old house where Mrs. Whatsit lives with Mrs. Which and Mrs. Who. In short order they are whisked off through time and space to a series of different planets in search of Mr. Murry, a physicist who was working on the tesseracts--or wrinkles in time--before he vanished.

L'Engle combines hard science fiction--she goes into detail about the tesseract and the fourth dimension--along with fantasy and a good bit of philosophy in her novel. The great thing is that she talks about complex ideas without talking down to the reader; we get to learn about the science of the story along with Meg and her companions. 

I think what really makes me love this book, though, is the sheer scope of it all. While it's about Meg and Charles Wallace's quest to find their father, it's also about a universal battle between good and evil. As the children travel the galaxy, they learn about the Dark Thing that is slowly destroying worlds, and in the process they discover their perceptions of themselves and their new friends changing.

In between, L'Engle paints some gorgeous scenes of beauty and goodness, contrasted with the quiet horror of worlds and society that have succumbed to the dark thing. The theme that overreaches all of the many others, though, is unconditional love, be it for others or for one's own flawed self.

A Wrinkle in Time is a book that definitely deserves to be read, perhaps on a dark and stormy night with some hot cocoa. It's entertaining and timeless, and, more important, it has meaning--and much more depth than most books these days.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first in a series of books known as The Time Quartet .

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