A Wrinkle In Time: 1963 Newbery Award

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Meg and Charles Wallace Murray: The Misfits

"We tesser.  Or you might say, we wrinkle".

Throughout her life, Meg Murray felt as though she didn't fit in, that her little brother, Charles Wallace, didn't fit in either, and that everyone else was easily able to conform to society's norms.  While her mother and twin brothers can act the part, she and her little brother have nothing in common with the.  So she is surprised one day to find that the popular athlete, Calvin O'Keefe, also feels like an outcast. Add to that the mystery of her father's disappearance and the sudden arrival of three very odd stranger to their town and Meg doesn't know what's serious and what's not.  When the mysterious strangers discuss that there is a wrinkle in time and that Meg's father is caught in it somehow, Meg finds herself journeying with Charles Wallace and Calvin on a very strange and wondrous journey to find her father.

I had never read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle before stating this undertaking.  I had been told I would love it, but just never had the inclination to read it before this.  In fact, I had never read a single one of her books, which may surprise some of my friends given that I love fantasy and science fiction works.  Having just finished the book, I found that I really enjoyed it once I got into it.  I have to admit it did take me a good number of chapters to really be able to get into reading this book.  So much of A Wrinkle in Time reminded me of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy that I found myself pulled in. Knowledge and light overtaking darkness is a major theme of this book.  Love also is a theme of the novel and one could argue that this is an allegory of the Christian faith, such as many of C.S. Lewis' fiction books.  This is not surprising given that L'Engle was Christian. It is a great fantasy read as well, for those who enjoy the previously mentioned trilogies.  Perhaps after I am done with my project I will read the rest of her books, as A Wrinkle In Time is the first in a long serious of books dealing with the Murray and O'Keefe families.