Classics Corner: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle; Classic Newbery Winner Science Fiction Fantasy About Conformity and Individuality

Classics Corner: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle; Classic Newbery Winner Science Fiction Fantasy About Conformity and Individuality




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: The best YA books are the ones that realize that their Readers are young, but intelligent. They don't talk down to them. They aren't afraid to discuss topics like death, desertion, separation, even higher concepts about faith and individuality. They do all that and still provide their Readers with an engaging read that captivates their imagination.

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is that type of book.

A great book has to have a great protagonist. Meg Murray is a great protagonist. She is not a model of perfection. She is insecure, impatient, unsure of herself, and often confused about the world around her. She is smart but doesn't do well in school because she follows the “shortcuts” her genius father encouraged her to take in Math. She deeply loves her family and even communicates with her selectively mute brilliant brother, Charles Wallace but is concerned about the whereabouts of her father who has been missing since Charles was a baby. It's not easy being Meg but that's what makes her so understandable.


One night (“a dark and stormy night,” yes, L'Engle bravely used that as her opening line.), Meg and her family encounter a strange visitor, Mrs. Whatsit who tells them that there is such a thing as “a tesseract.” A tesseract is a wrinkle in time, similar to a wormhole, in which someone can travel vast distances very quickly. It also happens to be what Meg's parents were studying and maybe where her father disappeared into.

Before too long Meg, Charles Wallace, their new friend Calvin O'Keefe, Mrs. Whatsit, and her companions Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which travel through the tesseract to another dimension.

A Wrinkle in Time is filled with imaginative situations and characters. The three Mrses. are a fascinating trio, and certainly the most memorable characters of the bunch. Mrs. Whatsit appears as a cloaked character and of the enigmatic three is the most human in behavior and appearance. Mrs. Who constantly speaks in quotations particularly from literature and philosophers because she can't use human terms for what she means. Mrs. Which is a being composed of light whose speeches are written in a stilted manner like “Qqquiettt chillldd.”

The three Mrs. are the kinds of characters that are so intriguing that they steal every moment they are in. Fortunately, they don't get too overdone. L'Engle knew when to use them such as tessering the children, giving them explanations, and bestowing them gifts. She also knew when they should back off. After all, such powerful seemingly omnipotent beings could make the quest too easy or make Meg nothing but a mere observer in her story. But Meg isn't. She, Calvin, and Charles Wallace are the real heroes of the story. It is their journey to go on, their lesson to learn, and L'Engle (and the Mrses.) let them, especially Meg, learn it.


As with many quests, each step on their journey is designed to teach the children something and not always are the lessons happy ones. When they encounter a dark cloud like spirit hovering over called The Black Thing, the kids learns that there is evil and darkness around or rather beings that do horrible things for selfish and cruel reasons and that there are people that want to stop that evil. (Their father is an example of a hero wanting to stop The Black Thing.)

When they encounter such characters as the Happy Medium and Aunt Beast, they learn not to take everything at face value. They also learn about appreciation and unconditional love, things that they will need in their final test on Camazotz, a very strange sinister planet.

To retrieve Meg and Charles Wallace's father, the children visit Camazotz, where the houses all look alike, residents move in the same exact formation at the same exact time, and everything is rigidly controlled by rules, regulations, and paperwork. Seeing that A Wrinkle in Time was first published in 1962, this was probably L'Engle's commentary about 1950’s-’60’s suburbia and conformity. If so it was a dire situation that she saw.

The people of Camazotz do the bidding of IT, a creature who runs the world with precision and sameness. He believes that individuality must be removed and that everyone must be alike. (“Like and equal are not the same thing,” Meg declares.)

What Meg realizes as she encounters IT is that she needs to use her compassion, love, acceptance and even her flaws like impatience, anger, awkwardness-all the things that make her an individual to fight IT and save her brother, friends, and father.
A Wrinkle in Time is a Newbery Medal Winner and deservedly so. It is an engaging fantasy adventure with brilliant characters and a lesson that Readers of all ages need to learn.