A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I read the entire Time Quintet, which is begun with A Wrinkle in Time, when I was a kid. I know that I did, but I can't remember exactly when. I know that most of it was before middle school, because I was surprised when I discovered the fourth book, Many Waters, on a shelf in the middle school library.

Some how the memories linked with A Wrinkle In Time are tied up with my memories of the first grade and Mrs. Brodie's class, but that can't be right because even though I was a little precocious in how I learned to read, I can't have been that advanced. At a guess, I must have been around 8 or 9 which explains some things about my memories of the book. Specifically, I couldn't remember anything about it except that I loved it.

I think I must have been too young for a lot of the concepts to stick despite being drawn in by the characters of Meg and Charles Wallace.

Meg struggles in school. She's smart but she can't seem to do things the way her teachers expect...even though she comes up with the right answers. She gets in trouble and she gets in fights. Many of these fights are in defense of her baby brother, Charles Wallace. Charles Wallace is odd. He's four but he speaks like an adult and seems to be able to read the minds of both Meg and her mother.

Charles Wallace and Meg live with their mother and twin brothers. Dad has disappeared mysteriously which is another cause for friction. One dark and stormy night the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit appears which leads the two kids along with their friend Calvin on a journey to rescue their father from a world consumed by an evil shadow.

This is a supremely cool book for kids. Meg is one of those universal characters. I think every kid, girl or boy, at some point feels out of step with the rest of the world and gets angry. That's probably what drew me in at such a young age, but the narrative encourages young readers to think about things like theoretical physics and what the consequences would be. It's just really cool; there is a reason it's survived with young readers for over 50 years and hasn't somehow become dated.