A Wrinkle in Time

by Madeleine L'Engle

English language

Published May 2, 1967 by Puffin.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-135493-4

(248 reviews)

A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult novel written by American author Madeleine L'Engle. First published in 1962, the book has won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The main characters—Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe—embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to save the Murrys' father and the world. The novel offers a glimpse into the war between light and darkness, and good and evil, as the young characters mature into adolescents on their journey. The novel wrestles with questions of spirituality and purpose, as the characters are often thrown into conflicts of love, divinity, and goodness. It is the first book in L'Engle's Time Quintet, which follows the Murrys and Calvin O'Keefe. L'Engle modeled the Murry family on her own. Scholar Bernice …

89 editions

AvonVilla@ramblingreaders.org reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet, #1)

Fasntasy, science fiction, religion and secularism converge

5 stars

My first copy of this book was the 1971 Puffin. I would have been about 10 or 11. I think as a young reader I was looking for escapism, and this book delivers it. It has everything I could relate to: a family setting, boys and girls, younger and old protagonists. And what happens to them? Space travel, meeting witches, an epic battle between good and evil, and an authoritarian dystopian planet. It's a hell of a mash up, but somehow it works beautifully.

I later read that Madeleine L'Engle was an Episcopalian (I think that means American Anglican). You can certainly see the religious influence on her book, but she got in trouble because when the characters list the historical warriors of light against darkness, they name Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Marie Curie alongside the perfunctory Jesus. That's a banning, or maybe a paddling, to quote The Simpsons. …

I now have the 50th anniversary edition on my e-reader. The image here on Bookwyrm/ramblingreaders I believe is a 1983 hardcover edition, which I'm not keen on. I also had a T-shirt based on the 1962 first edition dustjacket illustration, which has a nice mid-century modern design.

I read the sequels and saw the movie, they somehow lacked the spark I always get from this lovely little book.

Curtis reviewed A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle

Review of 'A wrinkle in time' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A good story that I very much enjoyed. Had I read it when I was younger, as it seems nearly everyone else I know has, I suspect I would have loved it.

I'm curious to see whether the movie upholds the anti-communist under(sometimes over)tones.

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time quintet)

Review of 'A Wrinkle in Time' on 'LibraryThing'

2 stars

I think I see why this is such an important book to many of my friends, but I didn't get on well with it. Part of the problem is definitely that I'm reading it as an adult and it's clearly intended for a significantly younger audience than the YA novels I've enjoyed over the past few years. But there's other stuff too.

The Meg-Calvin relationship developed without ever developing - like it was just inevitable that these two would have a super gender role normative relationship so there was no need to bother with exposition of it - and felt like it undermined her agency. The weirdly formal tone of most of the dialogue. The simplicity of "evil" in the book, which when its content was explored at all just felt like red scare propaganda, as if 1962 America didn't have its conformist, deindividuated suburbia. The occasional bursts of god-talk …

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time quintet)

Review of 'A Wrinkle in Time' on 'LibraryThing'

2 stars

loppear reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet, #1)

Review of 'A wrinkle in time.' on Goodreads

3 stars

I read this as a kid, but barely remembered it. Fine YA sci-fi with a blaring morality message that reads less clearly now that the public image of Christians is war with Science and not Communism.

Unruly Stacks reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet, #1)

Review of 'A Wrinkle in Time' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It's a dangerous thing to revisit the stories you loved as a child, and I worried about this book. I hadn't read it since I was a teen, and my memories of it were fond but vague. What if it wasn't as good as I remembered?

It wasn't, but it also was.

I listened to the audiobook, read by the author herself, and while it's a treat to hear Madeleine L'Engle, her speaking voice was more of a struggle than I'd imagined. Her depictions of American children feels much more dated even than when I first read them in the '90s. That said, the story's still fun, and the nostalgia's still strong, and I enjoyed it.

Marsha Woerner reviewed A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet) by Madeleine L'Engle

Review of "A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet)" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It's still a fun and fabulous book. I first read it when I was a preteen or teenager, and the only thing was the struggle between "good" and "evil". I have read it several times since then, and each time I get a little more from it. I doubt that the author intended it to be an allegorical treatise on good versus evil, but it can be twisted and used and interpreted and applied to so many situations that it is easy to create it.
I realized this time that that the main character is only 13. It seems wrong in many ways, except that when I first read it, I was about that, and she seemed so right.
It's about a girl, Meg, who gets involved in a search for her missing scientist father, with her younger (five-year-old) "strange" brother, Charles-Wallace and a 15-year-old boy, Calvin, that she just …

Gossamerchild reviewed A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet Book 1) by Madeleine L'Engle

Review of 'A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet Book 1)' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Amazing, as usual. This book never loses its luster for me.

Michael @ Knowledge Lost reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet, #1)

Review of 'A wrinkle in time.' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I can see why this book is a children’s classic; the adventure, intrigue and fantasy world combine together to make a truly fantastic novel. This is the first time I’ve read this book and I do feel like I missed out on experiencing this as a child. The three children in this book are great characters, not the typical sweet kids you seem to find in children’s stories; these kids have flaws and have been told to embrace them. Through their adventures to Camazotz you find that all the kids talents work together to help each other; Calvin shows an interest in philosophy, Meg with her talent for mathematics and Charles' intellectually curious.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the intrigue kept pushing me through this book. The weirdness of the plot and the world reminded me a little of [b:Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass|24213|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass|Lewis Carroll|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327872220s/24213.jpg|2375385] and how much I enjoyed reading that book. Don’t let the fact that this is a Children’s classic stop you from reading this book; like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland this is equally enjoyable to read as an adult. The philosophical and religious metaphors in the book would make this the perfect book to dissect and explore deeper.

Thomas Gaffney reviewed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Time quintet)

Review of 'A Wrinkle in Time' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Great book! VERY imaginative! While I found the main character of Meg to be a bit annoying for stretches in the middle, it was still a quick, fantastic read. The Catholicism scattered throughout did grate on me, but it wasn't enough to turn me off from the story.

Overall, a must-read for fantasy and sci-fi fans alike.