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It was a dark and stormy night.

On a night as gloom, a strange visitor appears at the Murry House and beckons Meg

Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe on an

adventure through time. They are whisked off in search of Meg’s scientist father, Mr.

Murry, who had been missing for five years ever since he discovered a new planet and

used the concept known as a tesseract to travel there. Guided by the strange visitor and

her friends, together known as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, the children

brave a dangerous journey to a planet that possesses all of the evil in the universe.

There, every house had the exact same gray pot of flowers. Every child bounced their

rubber balls in the exact same pace. Mothers opened their doors at the exact same time

to call for their children to come home. Fathers arrived home and took off their shoes at

exact same moment. Heck, everyone breathed in the exact same rhythm! The whole of

the planet was seized under the control of one mind, one authority. It may seem normal

at first glance, but there was everything sinister in the robotic movements and the

vacant stares. Meg’s father was there, and she has to rescue him from IT, the mind

behind this villainy of sameness. To defeat IT she had to find something IT didn’t have.

Something IT would never understand...

I had first heard about A Wrinkle in Time after it was mentioned multiple times in

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead as the main character’s favorite book. So I began

reading with high expectations that this book would be fantastical, filled with mystery

and suspense far greater than in When You Read Me . I was not completely wrong, per

say, but this book wasn’t as all mystical as I assumed.

Maybe it is because I had such high expectations, or maybe it is because I’m too old for

the book. It took many chapters for the book to begin its adventures and only a few

words for Meg to defeat IT and return home. I was a little disappointed.

I would rate this book a 7/10. The journey to a planet where everyone did the exact same

things at the exact same pace under the control of one mind was intriguing. As Meg

battles to regain the sanity of her little brother who had fallen under the control of IT, I

was wrestled into a wonder of Should everyone be the same? Differences cause

problems. We should cease control and give away the responsibility of decisions to IT.

Mrs. Whatsit said it best: Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a

sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

I recommend this book to younger teens and to your little brothers and sisters. The

travel of time and concepts of matter and energy is an adventure to understand!

However, I do believe high schoolers are a little too old for the book and should instead

try When You Reach Me , a similar sci-fi book with similar concepts of time but with

mysteries thrilling enough to captivate an older audience.