argaret Murry is midway through a bumpy transition to womanhood. Her father is missing, presumed by gossiping neighbors to have abandoned his family. Her youngest brother—derided in town as a backward child—is about to enter school, drawing more taunts and inflaming all of his sister's protective instincts. Meg's own course through the education system has been full of conflict, too, from arguments with teachers to open brawls with unkind students.
Ironically, though, young Charles Wallace isn't learning-arrested in the least. If anything, he is a genius, particularly where making odd friends is concerned. When the 5-year-old boy cozies up to three strange old ladies who have taken up residence in the local haunted house, Meg's first fear is that he may be exposing the Murry family to even further ridicule.
But Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which aren't merely a trio of eccentrics. In fact, they have come from beyond the solar system to confirm the validity of the missing Mr. Murry's scientific work on tesseracts. Tesseracts, they reveal, are folds in space-time that allow instantaneous travel between worlds. Meg's father has learned to tesser, but travelling in this fashion has taken him to a terrible place called Camazotz, a world conquered by an all-consuming darkness known only as IT.
As the children's acquaintance with the three women grows, Meg, Charles Wallace and a local boy named Calvin discover that Earth has also fallen under IT's shadow. Now it is their turn to tesser to Camazotz in a desperate and dangerous bid to save Meg's father ... and possibly their own homeworld, too.
Individualism triumphs against conformity
It is no accident that Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (and follow-ups A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Wind in the Door) is still a favorite with young readers and parents 40 years after its initial writing. The story is gentle and lacks for nothing. Its feisty but imperfect heroine faces down a strong and terrible foe, aided—but never rescued—by exotic and completely loving adults. The backdrop is a sensual tapestry of planets and creatures.
As one of SF's first young feminist heroines, Meg also stands the test of time. She is independent but vulnerable, and possesses wisdom that the genius men around her distinctly lack. If she seems old-fashioned in any way, it is in the complete trust she places in benign-seeming strangers—a
quality that may seem out of date, but one that is utterly winsome, too.
L'Engle's message in the novel is simple but important. It is better, she argues, to be yourself than to copy everyone else, preferable to give in to anger once in a while than to meekly accept a bad fate. Meg is no mere embodiment of determined self-will, however—while remaining uniquely herself, she channels her waywardness in ways that benefit the interests of her small community of family and friends. Her first concern is always those she loves, and she fights for them passionately, without ever compromising her identity.
This strong theme, when combined with L'Engle's vivid writing and flashes of humor, set A Wrinkle in Time high up in the ranks of influential SF books for young readers, the novels that lure new people to the genre, showering them with delights too intense to ever give up.
