A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. – Madeleine L’Engle, Newberry acceptance speech 1963

Madeleine L’Engle is one of my favorite authors on the whole, but more for her non-fiction than any of her novels. I read A Wrinkle in Time once in middle school and wasn’t crazy about it (mainly because of the unorthodox spirituality, which we’ll get to in due time). Then in college, I discovered Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, and I fell in love with her writing. I would highly recommend that book to any Christian curious about the intersection of faith and art (whether or not you want to make any sort of art yourself), but it was particularly helpful for me as a writer. She’s hardly a “conventional” Christian, and there are still some beliefs she expresses that I disagree with her about, but I found great encouragement from that book nonetheless.

As for A Wrinkle in Time, it’s a book that’s grown on me through the years, but much like The Lord of the Rings, I still appreciate it more than I truly love it. It’s a landmark of both science fiction and the YA genre (for very different reasons). It’s a landmark for scifi inasmuch as, while there have been female authors in the genre pretty much since the beginning (Mary Shelley, anyone?), this was one of the first of the genre to feature a female protagonist (it was 1962, y’all). As for YA, L’Engle was one of the pioneers of children’s literature with mature subjects (later on in this same series, there is a book that features a birth scene, which was still pretty taboo at the time for “children’s literature”). And while children’s stories have always dealt with mature themes in some sense (fairy tales dealt with everything from serial killers and incest to obeying your parents), they were often hidden behind metaphors. L’Engle was simply one of the first to tackle such subjects directly.

One other thing that I don’t think L’Engle gets credit for is the neurodiversity she attempts to represent here. Obviously, neuroscience has come a long way since 1962, but I still appreciate her showing kids who would be marked as “developmentally disabled” to be actually very intelligent (even if she sometimes gets the specifics wrong).

While I’ve read the first three sequels of what’s billed as the “Time Quintet” (I haven’t gotten into the fifth one, mainly because it’s also the last book in a totally different series with a totally different protagonist…), this book stands pretty well on its own. I enjoyed the sequels mostly because I just really like the family dynamic – some people say that the Weasleys are the best fictional family, but I’d pick the Murrys any day. But I also prefer AWIT on its own because the sequels explain the magic/science/etc. a bit more than I like, and it’s more fun when the events are a little mysterious.

I probably won’t talk much about the 2018 movie, so I might as well give my few thoughts about it here: It’s not bad, but much like the Tale of Despereaux movie, it doesn’t seem to understand what made the book so engaging in the first place. The cast is generally fine (the concept of race-bending the Murrys was a good thought), it’s mostly the script that was lacking.

Just FYI, this might be my last series for this site. It’s partly because I’m running out of things to write about, partly because I’ll hopefully have an internship for spring (and thus not have time for the site). I’m always open to new stories (although I can’t guarantee I’ll want to write a whole series about it).

You’re given the form, but you have to write the [story] yourself.

Join me on another interstellar adventure…