A Wrinkle in Time: (Newbery Medal Winner)

Read only as an adult - a really interesting book, but I had a hard time getting past the very overt religious overtones casting things in black and white. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the story!

I want to read this book because I started reading it when I was younger but I lost the book. I remembered the beginning a bit. it was a fun read. I didn't like how Calvin's crush on Meg seemed to come out off no where. It seemed a bit premature. I'm curious to read the next book. it ends on such a cliff hanger.

Sadly, this isn’t as good as I remembered it being. I read it as a kid, and then again with my older kids about 10 years ago. Reading it with my youngest now, and it’s a bit disappointing. The core of the story still has something compelling, and Meg is a pretty good protagonist. It’s easy to identify with her apparent mediocrity, and the unrecognized power that lies just beneath it. She’s constantly overlooked by everyone, including herself, but in the end does have exactly the capacity that’s needed. That final turn actually works better than much of what surrounds it, partly because L’Engle manages it with more subtlety than she does the rest. Our awareness of (view spoiler)[Meg’s love (hide spoiler)] just steadily accumulates throughout the book, without ever explicitly being told that it is The Important Thing that will matter in the end. So, well done. So much of the rest of the book, sadly, isn’t so subtle. L’Engle builds her moral framework in stark, simple terms, and the harder she tries, the less convincing it is. When she’s describing settings or events, she does a fine job—the early scenes at their home, for example, or the first tessering. But she takes shortcuts any time there’s a capital-P Point she wants to get across, beating them into place with whatever blunt tool is at hand. Then there are the religious elements. I remembered, in an abstract way, that the author was religious, but somehow I hadn’t recalled quite how much of that she stuffed into this book. I began to wonder why it bothered me so much. It’s not simply that it’s present, I don’t think, but how it’s treated. Other fantastical elements are explored and interrogated, either by the narration or the characters or both. But God just sits there in the abstract, expected to carry a lot of the conceptual work, but never becoming a real, examined presence. God is a moral and emotional prop, basically. Which I don’t object to on theological grounds, but it doesn’t work well in the story. As a kid, I recall finding this book at least a bit profound. To me now it definitely feels like the kids’ book that is. Not just in the simplicity of the writing, which I can appreciate, but more in the presentation and development of the ideas. As an adult reader, I find that all the bright lines and simplifications make for a less interesting story. I suppose that’s appropriate for readers of a certain age, and in that sense it probably still works as an entry point into this allegorical kind of speculative fiction. But I’m not sure it’s still the best book for that, especially when so much of its reputation seems to be steeped in basic nostalgia.

A classic! This is truly one of my favorites.

To be perfectly honest, this wouldn't be a book that I would usually pick up to read but I was pleasantly surprised. Because of the yearly reading challenges, I decided to finally read this classic and I read it while listening along with the audiobook. For anyone who thinks that they will never like fantasy or science fiction, give this book a try (and maybe with the audiobook too) because you won't be disappointed :)