Key themes
- Love as the force that resists conformity and control
- The gifted, different child who the world cannot contain
- Science, faith and the possibility that they are not opposites
About this book
Children travel across the universe to rescue a father; a strange, brave science-fantasy classic.
Published in 1962 after 26 rejections, A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Medal and has sold over 14 million copies. L'Engle described it as a book about physics and God written for her children.
Discussion questions
- Meg Murry is a deeply imperfect hero — insecure, emotional, stubborn. How does L'Engle use these flaws to make her ultimate act of love more, not less, powerful?
- The Happy Medium, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which are deliberately strange figures — neither fully human nor fully alien. What does L'Engle achieve by making the forces of good so specifically weird?
- IT represents conformity and control through an overriding mind that eliminates individual will. What is L'Engle saying about the relationship between individuality, love and resistance to totalitarianism?
- The novel integrates Christian theology, quantum physics and mythology. How does this mixture work — and does the religious dimension require the reader to share L'Engle's faith?
- A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 26 publishers before publication. What in it do you think made publishers nervous — and why has it endured?
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