A Wrinkle in Time - jsclarkcharter.com

1 For Charles Wadsworth Camp andWallace Collin FranklinTable of ContentsTitle PageINTRODUCTION1 - MRS WHATSIT2 - MRS WHO3 - MRS WHICH4 - THE black THING5 - THE TESSERACT6 - THE HAPPY MEDIUM7 - THE MAN WITH RED EYES8 - THE TRANSPARENTCOLUMN9 - IT10 - ABSOLUTE ZERO11 - AUNT BEAST12 - THE FOOLISH AND THEWEAKALSO BY MADELEINE L ENGLEAFTERWORDQUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHORNEWBERY MEDALACCEPTANCE SPEECH - THEEXPANDING UNIVERSEC opyright PageINTRODUCTIONIN JULY OF 1983, there was asymposium at Simmons College entitled Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? Madeleine L Engle spoke the first night. Ispoke the last night. Her immediateanswer to Prufrock s question was: We d better dare. My immediateanswer was: Certainly not. I hardly daredisturb my springer spaniel. I was on anumber of programs with theincomparable Madeleine. We joked oncethat we were bookends to conferences. Ifshe began one, I d end it, and vice although I saw her and chatted withher on a number of occasions through theyears, I am sorry to say that I was a bittoo much in awe of her intellect anddaring spirit to really become a first met her, as most people have,while reading A Wrinkle in time .

2 Duringthe sixties and early seventies I wasstruggling to become a writer andgathering my own small mountain ofrejections. I wasn t a child who, likeMadeleine L Engle, knew from an earlyage that she d be a writer. I had decidedto become a writer after I was already awife and mother, so I was reading theacclaimed children s books of the periodto educate myself. How did they do it these writers who not only found theyellow brick road to publication but agold medal at the end of it? Which is howI came to read the 1963 Newbery Awardwinner. It was a dark and stormy night. Mygracious, what was she doing starting herbook with Bulwer-Lytton s infamous firstline? Was this to be a send-up ofVictorian fiction? And then, just as she sstirring up a dark and stormy plot with amiserable misfit of a heroine, amysteriously missing father, and astrange younger brother, in blows acomical little personage named, of allthings, Mrs Whatsit.

3 Mrs Who? No, that sone of her friends. The third one is a MrsWhich. I was reminded of the Abbott andCostello piece Who s on First? Beforewe ve digested this combination ofsuspense and comedy, we find ourselvesflung into an exhilarating ride throughmultiple dimensions and strange newworlds and are asked to puzzle overwords of wisdom from sages and saintsfrom every age. In one book we confrontquantum physics, Christian theology , anda cosmic struggle between good and is not difficult to understand why somany publishers were afraid to touch it science fiction? Is it fantasy? Is itreligious allegory? Whatever it is, could achild understand it, much less like it?But the book that was too hard andstrange for adult editors has been, for thelast fifty years, joyfully claimed by youngreaders millions of them from all overthe world. Last March I went to see thedocumentary Chekhov for Children. Andthere on the screen was a sixth-gradernamed Rebecca Stead.

4 For me it was asort of Wrinkle in time , for I was seeingthe author at just about the time thatMadeleine L Engle made a magical visitto Rebecca s New York City publicschool. I m guessing it was about thenthat young Rebecca fell in love with AWrinkle in time . Her own NewberyAward book, When You Reach Me, is astunning homage to the book shecherished as a asked my son John what heremembered about reading the bookthirty-five years or so ago. Heremembers, he says, that A Wrinkle inTime was one of my first imaginary tripsthrough the space- time continuum, andthat Meg was one of my first imaginarygirlfriends whom I would have beenwilling to travel through time with. I caught myself smiling at t Meg, who considered herself sounattractive, be pleased and surprised tohear my handsome son say that? And, ofcourse, that s one reason we readers lovethe book. We know Meg and CharlesWallace and Calvin.

5 They re not simplycharacters in a story, they are friends wecare about, think about, and rememberlong after we ve closed the many ways Meg is a strangecharacter for a boy to choose as animaginary girlfriend. Like the youngMadeleine L Engle, she is the weirdoutsider longing to fit in. Still, is there achild alive who has never had thisexperience? Most of us think we arealone in this that everyone else are the different one. We are the oddchild out, and we yearn to be a part of thecrowd. A wonderful aspect of A Wrinklein time is its celebration of the fact, hell, as it is embodied onCamazotz, is being exactly like everyoneelse. A child who does not bounce hisball just as every other child does is takeninto custody to be reeducated until heconforms. It is Meg s very difference, her terrible temper, that saves her frombeing taken over by the malignant our world, there are thescientifically minded that scoff at thestories told by the religious and thereligiously inclined who refuse to acceptthe theories of modern science.

6 The firstgroup will wonder how a woman ofMadeleine L Engle s intellect couldpossibly be a Christian, and the secondwill wonder how a real Christian couldset such store by the words of Godlessscientists. But Madeleine was, first of all,a searcher for truth, and so A Wrinkle inTime draws us into a new kind ofthinking. Things are truly not simplywhat they seem in science or in if we graduate, as she did, fromNewton to Einstein, we might discoverthat those two worlds are not as far apartas we Wrinkle in time , however, is notloved for either its scientific or itsreligious insights. It is loved for its Lopez says that stories should beimportant to us insofar as they sustain uswith illumination and heal us. This bookdoes both. My daughter Mary hasprobably read every piece of fictionMadeleine ever wrote and is still a bitenvious that her mother actually knewMs.

7 L Engle. I was well aware of howmany times Mary had reread A Ring ofEndless Light, so I wondered how wellshe remembered A Wrinkle in time thirty-odd years later. What I remember, shesaid, is love. The hint of young romanticlove between Meg and Calvin (and, ofcourse, they get married later), lovebetween husband and wife, betweenparent and child, between brother andsister (that s how Meg saves CharlesWallace, you know), and the lovebetween Meg and Aunt Beast. Fifty years later, I think Madeleinewould love for her book to beremembered that way. Katherine Paterson1 MRS WHATSITIT WAS A DARK AND her attic bedroom Margaret Murry,wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat onthe foot of her bed and watched the treestossing in the frenzied lashing of thewind. Behind the trees clouds scuddedfrantically across the sky. Every fewmoments the moon ripped through them,creating wraithlike shadows that racedalong the house in her quilt, Meg wasn t usually afraid of weather.

8 It s not just the weather, she thought. It s the weather on top of everything top of me. On top of Meg Murrydoing everything School was all wrong. She dbeen dropped down to the lowest sectionin her grade. That morning one of herteachers had said crossly, Really, Meg, Idon t understand how a child withparents as brilliant as yours are supposedto be can be such a poor student. If youdon t manage to do a little better you llhave to stay back next year. During lunch she d roughhoused alittle to try to make herself feel better,and one of the girls said scornfully, After all, Meg, we aren t grade-schoolkids anymore. Why do you always actlike such a baby? And on the way home from school, asshe walked up the road with her arms fullof books, one of the boys had saidsomething about her dumb babybrother. At this she d thrown the bookson the side of the road and tackled himwith every ounce of strength she had, andarrived home with her blouse torn and abig bruise under one and Dennys, her ten-year-oldtwin brothers, who got home from schoolan hour earlier than she did, weredisgusted.

9 Let us do the fighting whenit s necessary, they told her. A delinquent, that s what I am, shethought grimly. That s what they ll besaying next. Not Mother. But Else. I wish Father But it was still not possible to thinkabout her father without the danger oftears. Only her mother could talk abouthim in a natural way, saying, When yourfather gets back Gets back from where? And when?Surely her mother must know whatpeople were saying, must be aware of thesmugly vicious gossip. Surely it musthurt her as it did Meg. But if it did shegave no outward sign. Nothing ruffled theserenity of her expression. Why can t I hide it, too? Megthought. Why do I always have to showeverything?The window rattled madly in the wind,and she pulled the quilt close about up on one of her pillows, a grayfluff of kitten yawned, showing its pinktongue, tucked its head under again, andwent back to was asleep. Everybodyexcept Meg.

10 Even Charles Wallace, the dumb baby brother, who had anuncanny way of knowing when she wasawake and unhappy, and who wouldcome, so many nights, tiptoeing up theattic stairs to her even Charles Wallacewas could they sleep? All day on theradio there had been hurricane could they leave her up in the atticin the rickety brass bed, knowing that theroof might be blown right off the houseand she tossed out into the wild night skyto land who knows where?Her shivering grew uncontrollable. You asked to have the atticbedroom, she told herself savagely. Mother let you have it because you re theoldest. It s a privilege, not a punishment. Not during a hurricane, it isn t aprivilege, she said aloud. She tossed thequilt down on the foot of the bed, andstood up. The kitten stretchedluxuriously, and looked up at her withhuge, innocent eyes. Go back to sleep, Meg said. Just beglad you re a kitten and not a monsterlike me.