A most popular and original book is A Wrinkle in Time. The book sparkles with the author's vitality and imagination and proceeds at a fast pace with recognizable character types. Her contributions are ingenious but not deep. The climactic scene in which Meg stands crying before Charles Wallace bothers me for two reasons. First of all, I find it hard to understand why she could not have done this before; secondly, if Mrs. Whatsit could tesser her and Charles Wallace away from IT, why couldn't she have been with them before and saved them from their father's inept tessering? Here, it seems to me, the ground rules of the plot have been violated. In the previous visit to IT, the children had to go alone; now Mrs. Whatsit is there to tesser them off. This may seem minor, but it is of a piece with the main criticism I have to make of this book; there is a facility about it, a slickness in characterization and dialogue which makes me feel that I have been dealt with less than directly. There is no question but that the book is good entertainment and that the writer carries the story along with a great deal of verve; there is some question about the depth of its quality. (p. 159)
Carolyn Horovitz, in Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books: 1956–1965, edited by Lee Kingman (copyright © 1965 by The Horn Book, Inc., Boston), Horn Book, 1965 (and reprinted by Horn Book, 1966).
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