Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is a splendid fantasy; … it seldom violates reality. The Murry family relationships, Calvin's relationship to his parents, and Meg's relation to school authorities and the community, as well as the character portraits, are probable and realistic. Envy of the Murrys, gossip about the supposedly runaway father-husband, malice, selfishness, and even Charles Wallace's arrogance, are unflinchingly presented. Tesseracting, a seemingly instantaneous movement in time and/or place, is given a metamorphic fifth-dimension explanation. The witches who were formerly stars dying in the struggle against the evil shadow fight a symbolic battle steeped in classical and Gospel-of-John traditions, a battle that is psychically realistic even though symbolic. One can even relate Mrs. Whatsit's, Mrs. Who's, and Mrs. Which's actions to current theories of black holes in space and neutron stars; even the life style on Camazotz has an affinity to entropy. The only weakness in the novel is the confrontation with the It-brain by Mr. Murry and the children; the shift from the symbolic to the actual confrontation is a dramatic collapse of an antagonist from the infinite to the finite much like the cannon battle in [John Milton's] Paradise Lost. (pp. 295-96)
Craig Wallace Barrow, in Children's Literature: Annual of The Modern Language Association Seminar on Children's Literature and The Children's Literature Association, Vol. 5, edited by Francelia Butler (© 1976 by Francelia Butler; all rights reserved), Temple University Press, 1976.
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