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Revisiting a childhood favorite: a book review of ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle
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The book starts with the classic cheesy line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Despite that, it won the 1963 Newbery Medal (considered the most prestigious award for children’s literature). I remember the first time I saw this book at the Walden’s Bookstore at the East Hills Mall in St. Joseph, Missouri, I was in fourth grade and it was love at first sight. I couldn’t take my eyes off the cover and was amazed that it was in the juvenile area. It was all bluish and had that Pegasus looking creature and the big head with red eyes, it was like all those cr*p science fiction novels my father read, but it was for kids like me. I loved the cover so much that I didn’t read the book for a long time afraid that it wouldn’t live to my expectations.
Eventually I did read the book and I loved it. I know that at some point I owned ‘A Wind in the Door’ and sort of remember reading it, but somehow it either didn’t measure up to ‘A Wrinkle’ and/or I simply have forgotten it. Until buying a copy of ‘Wrinkle’ at Target, I was unaware that L’Engle wrote a series of five books.
Here are the things I do remember; Mrs. Whatsit, the odd woman who lived near the Wallace family and made an unexpected visit during “a dark and stormy night,” the young son, Charles Wallace, whom everyone treated as learning disabled but was in fact a genius, and of course, the before mentioned Pegasus creature. Most importantly, the idea of a tesseract which was very quantum physics before quantum physics was an everyday concept. (The illustration of a tesseract was the same as I remembered and as an adult reader I was even more impressed by the skill of L’Engle who made a complicated concept relatable to children.) Oh, and that some of the characters moved around in bubbles and the man with the red eyes was like the scary Wizard in the movie version of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ before he was found out to be that benign guy behind the curtain. As soon as I started rereading the book I remembered Meg Wallace, the heroine of the story and sister to Charles, was supposed to be awkward and socially backward. I forgot that the other boy in the story, Calvin O’Keefe, was supposed to be a hunk and developed a crush on Meg. Yeah, right.
You know the saying, ‘you can never go back,’ as for reading one of my favorite childhood books, I can confidently confirm it; you can never go back and recapture the original glee of something you adored as a child. Granted, reading literature written for children is going to lose something with adult sensibilities. I find stories written for the juvenile set tend to feel slow, even when there is action in the narrative, which was exactly the type of pacing I felt when rereading ‘A Wrinkle.’
Another thing I’ve noticed about books written for children, character development either seems sluggish or non-existent. For instance, the children barely know Mrs. Whatsit and they know nothing about Mrs. Who or Mrs. Which when they agree to literally leave this dimension for another under their guidance. Even in my generation it was drilled in us not to take rides with strangers, let alone leave the third dimension.
Of course the book was first published near the height of the red scare, 1962, thus it is easy to spot ‘the man with the red eyes’ and the society he rules (another planet) as an allegory for what life would be like under communist rule. It is very ‘1984’ before the year 1984 and before I first read ‘1984,’ but after ‘1984’ was written. You got that, right? Okay, let’s talk about quantum physics again.
After rereading ‘Wrinkle’ I found the most interesting part of the book was the ‘An Appreciation’ written by Anna Quindlen that gave some history on ‘Wrinkle’ and also the ‘Go Fish’ interview L’Engle gave which is printed at the end. I’m torn between wanting to read the four other books in the series, especially now that I know that the series jumps around to the children of Meg and Calvin along with other adventures with Charles Wallace and not reading it because I just might find myself disappointed with L’Engle’s work.
Overall, I would recommend ‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ I mean it was fun to go back and reread something that I used to cherish even if it didn’t have the same appeal. As for younger readers, I think they will enjoy the book. Of course it was written for a generation of children who are probably the grandparents of the present intended audience, but if they can get over the social customs of nearly fifty years ago then they might enjoy all the Mrs. Whatsit’s shenanigans. I will say that L’Engle was socially forward enough that she made the mother, Mrs. Wallace, a scientist who was a single parent because her husband had gone missing after working on some government project (I wonder if the children will go looking for him?). Further, a lot that L’Engle wrote about now seems to be accepted science. Thus I end this review with the thought of a young girl begging her mother to buy her the book with the Pegasus looking creature on it…sometimes love strikes hard and fast and it is always nice to know that you can revisit it with fondness.
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