Wednesday, February 28, 2007

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle

I first read this book in the fourth grade and can't believe I've waited this long to read it again. What a book! It's definitely one of my new favorites.

"It was a dark and stormy night," begins the story of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin, three children who learn to travel through space and time via a wrinkle, a tesseract, in order to rescue Meg's father, a scientist who disappeared while on a top secret mission.

In rescuing Mr. Murry, the children come face to face with evil and must stand up against it with the one thing they possess that evil does not--love.

What an incredible story! I particularly enjoyed reading it because Madeline L'Engle's book, Walking on Water, is one of my favorite non-fiction books. In it she talks about the relationship between faith and art and shares so much insight into her own writing process as well as a lot of other wisdom for life in general. If you've not read it yet, do!

L'Engle's own faith shines through this book and it asks some big questions about love, evil, and free will. As she says in the introduction, "Some of these questions don't have finite answers, but the questions themselves are important. Don't stop asking, and don't let anybody tell you the questions aren't worth it. They are."

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

"One thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be."

"You don't know how lucky you are to be loved."

"I think with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist."

"But of course we can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts."

"Don't be afraid to be afraid."

I can't wait to read the rest of this series and think I'll start reading this book out loud to my girls tonight!

4 comments:

Betsy said...

This book is an all time favorite of mine. I remember reading it in 6th grade and L'Engle's been a favorite ever since! Walking on Water is great...it's been several years since I read it and I still think about it when I'm standing next to rivers and creeks! The follow up books to this were really good too, but I don't remember them very well.

Joanne : The Simple Wife said...

I ordered the next two books in the series last night before I went to sleep...can't wait for them to come!

M said...

One of my favorite books as a child.

Bonnie Jacobs said...

One of MY favorite books as an ADULT. It was published in 1963, the year my third child was born, so I read the book with my children. And I loved it.