Abrahamian, Peter

Book Review #1

 Period 4

31 October 2016

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L’Engle

Science Fiction

232 pages

Newbery Award

            The novel, A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle is the story of Meg Murry, a teenager who is sent on an adventure through time and space with her younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O’Keefe to rescue her father from a planet called Camazotz with the help of the three W’s. At the beginning of the book, Meg is an unattractive, weird, deliberate, but loving girl, troubled by lack of confidence and her worries about her father, who has been missing for over a year. The plot begins with an unexpected visit from a woman called Mrs. Whatsit. She frightens Meg’s mother, an attractive and intelligent woman, by encouraging her of the actuality of a tesseract- a “wrinkle” in space and time. On the next evening, Meg and Charles Wallace, an extraordinary and smart boy, walked over to Mrs. Whatsit’s cabin; on the way, they meet Calvin O’Keefe, a tall, handsome, and athletic boy that goes to Meg’s school.The three children learn from Mrs. Whatsit and her friends Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which about a great evil that is terrorizing space called the Dark Thing. The three Mrs. W’s transport the children to Camazotz to rescue Meg’s father and bring him back home. On Camazotz, the children realize that everything appears and moves in the same way because the whole planet is being controlled by IT, a giant bodiless brain. Charles Wallace tries to fight IT but is defeated by the evil and is in now control of IT; Charles Wallace leads Meg and Calvin to Mr. Murry and together they challenge IT. However, they, too, are not able to survive IT’s power; they escape when Mr. Murry appears and grasps Meg and Calvin, “tessering” away with them to a planet called Ixchel inhabited by tall beast who take care of travelers. During the transportation to Ixchel, Meg was caught in the Dark Thing and was paralyzed; one of the beasts cured Meg from paralysis and took care of  her until the three W’s showed up. Mrs. Which tells Meg that she has one ability that IT does not have but will have to figure it out on her own; when standing face-to-face with IT, Meg realizes that the ability that IT does not have is the ability to love. Therefore, by showing her love for Charles Wallace, she is able to bring him back to his normal self; Meg releases Charles from IT’s control and tessers with him through time and space, landing in her twin brother’s vegetable garden on Earth, where her father and Calvin stood waiting. The family joyfully reunites and gets an unexpected visit from the three W’s to congratulate them for their accomplishment.

      One of the things I liked about the book is its plot; it was interesting to see Meg and her companions traveling around space and time with the three W’s to save Meg’s father from the clutches of evil. What I also liked was the science involved in this book; learning about the different dimensions were very fascinating to learn about and some fun facts scattered around the book were also very compelling to learn about like the order of the elements according to its atomic number, square roots of unusual numbers such as five and seven, and the reciting of the Gettysburg Address. What I appreciate about the book was its magnificent use of vocabulary. I had to search up over twenty words just to understand what was going on. This book has extended my vast knowledge of vocabulary. Words like deliberate,  exclusive, and inadvertently were compulsive words that were unknown to me. What I didn't like about the book was its length and religious remarks. People who are atheist or another religion will be offended by the Christian remarks made in this book. This book could be improve if it was a little bit longer and if it didn't involve any form of any religion. The ending of the book was very satisfying to me. The whole family reunites after Meg saves Charles Wallace from the evil clutches of IT. Mr. Murry has finally returned from his prison and nobody is happier than Meg. I would recommend this book to people who love Science Fiction. The plot is amazing and the vocabulary is magnificent. The characters each have their own unique personality that makes the book more fascinating.