Books Front Lines and Frontiers From Camazotz to Stranger Things: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle A reminder that this SF classic never goes out of style… By Alan Brown | Published on January 6, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement. Today, we’re looking at A Wrinkle in Time, a classic children’s book I first read about six decades ago, and which has suddenly become topical again. My son, who (along with his wife and daughter) is a Stranger Things fan, recently told me that Holly, one of the characters on the show, was reading A Wrinkle in Time and using it to put some of her supernatural adventures in context during this final season. There must be a few Stranger Things fans who noted the connection and might be wondering what this old book is about, and since delving into old science fiction books is kind of my thing, I am happy to help them out! I couldn’t find a copy of A Wrinkle in Time in my basement, so for this review I checked a copy out of my local library. Other than stating the book was copyrighted in 1962 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, there is no mention of when this particular edition was published, although from the long list of other books by L’Engle in the front of the book, it was some decades after its original run. It features cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, which captures some key scenes from the book in a nice, impressionistic fashion. The cover also includes the special seal that indicates the book received the John Newbery Medal, a prestigious literary award given annually by the Association for Library Service to Children since 1921. About the Author Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007) was an American author who frequently wrote for children, and whose work often featured science fiction and fantasy themes. Born in New York City, she was a shy child and difficult student whose parents moved her between a number of private schools. She was an actor in New York when she met her husband, actor Hugh Franklin. They moved to Connecticut where they ran a small store, and she was able to focus on her writing. They had three children, one of whom was adopted. After years of rejections, L’Engle finally found success with A Wrinkle in Time. That best-selling book was followed by several direct sequels, including A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and many of her later works were set in the same universe as that original book. In addition, L’Engle also wrote a play, short stories, poetry, books for adults, and works on Christian theology. She received many awards during her lifetime, and was recognized in 1997 with a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. A Wrinkle in Time has been adapted twice by the Disney Corporation. The first was a television movie in 2004, which did not fare well with critics and was disliked by L’Engle. The second adaptation was a big-budget feature film released in 2018, directed by Ava DuVernay, buoyed by a cast of respected actors and impressive special effects. Unfortunately, this film was also met with a mixed critical reception, and did not do well at the box office. The Spiritual Dimension If my recollection is correct, I first read A Wrinkle in Time back in 1964 or 1965, when I was nine or ten years old. My mom generally visited the library every two weeks, and would pick up books she thought might interest me and my brothers. I do remember that the first time I read it, the book scared the heck out of me. The idea of a child having to rescue a parent was a bit much for me to accept, and L’Engle did a very good job making the antagonists evil and keeping the narrative tension high. But while I remember to this day many of the scenes from the book and the battle between light and dark, upon my first reading I missed the spiritual nature of the book. During this latest re-read, which I think is the first time I’ve revisited the book since that initial reading, the religious aspects of that fight between light and dark jumped right out at me. The book explicitly mentions God, and the inhabitants of one planet sing a hymn based on a quote from the Hebrew Bible (the 42nd chapter of the Book of Isaiah, according to my research). At another point, when discussing historical figures who have stood against darkness, one character quotes the Gospel of John, the fifth verse of the first chapter, in a passage referring to Jesus: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” But despite these references, the spirituality of the book is not heavy-handed, and L’Engle approaches the religious aspects with an open-minded, ecumenical approach. One interesting aspect of L’Engle’s approach is that she flips the cliché of order being associated with good and chaos being associated with evil. Her protagonist, Meg Murry, is insecure, emotional, and frequently angry. The three women who guide Meg are quirky and unpredictable. L’Engle shows that the side of good and light can be served by people with faults and messiness in their lives, and those who are creative and unpredictable. On the other hand, the evil antagonists emphasize order and discipline. They take pleasure in destroying people’s individuality, and forcing them into conformity and obedience. The greatest weapon of evil is authoritarianism. Ironically, in preparing for this review, I discovered that A Wrinkle in Time has frequently been challenged and targeted for banning from libraries for various reasons, including complaints about the religious aspects of the novel. Detractors mention the fact that in the book, Jesus is listed among a number of historical figures who have stood against darkness, which they argue diminishes his divinity (despite the fact that he’s mentioned before any other historical figure, and his name accompanied by a quote from the Bible). But it appears to me that the biggest reason motivating these attempts at book banning is not what is explicit in the text—it is the beliefs of L’Engle herself. During her lifetime, L’Engle espoused Christian universalism, an ecumenical approach to the faith that has long raised the ire of the type of fundamentalists who are behind most book-banning efforts. And certainly, her embrace of creativity and free thinking runs counter to the philosophy of those whose approach to religion emphasizes order and obedience. I find this sad, because as a Christian, I feel L’Engle’s inclusive and open-minded approach is a better representation of the faith than the angry voices of censorship. A Wrinkle in Time During a “dark and stormy night” (L’Engle audaciously opens the book with that hoary cliché), Meg Murry is fretful and unable to sleep, troubled by problems at school and the mystery of her missing father. She goes downstairs to find her youngest brother, the odd but precocious Charles Wallace, who has made sandwiches. Her mother joins them, and examines Meg’s face, bruised in a fight at school after someone taunted her about her brother’s oddness. Charles Wallace reports that three women have taken residence in a nearby abandoned, and allegedly haunted, house, and that he has met one of them, Mrs. Whatsit. And then she shows up—an eccentric woman swathed with scarves and wearing a big hat. Mrs. Murry is not impressed, but invites her in, and is stunned when Mrs. Whatsit mentions a tesseract, which is a concept her physicist husband had been working on before he disappeared. This all happens in the first chapter, and L’Engle proves herself an expert in worldbuilding, capable of providing the reader with large amounts of information without resorting to lumps of exposition. While troubled young protagonists are common today, they were not in the days when the book was written, and during my first reading, I found myself, a bookish, insecure, and bespectacled youngster, immediately identifying with Meg and her faults. The next day, a tired and grumpy Meg mouths off to a teacher and is then sent to the principal, who tells her she must accept the fact her father is gone, which only makes her angrier. After school, Charles Wallace asks her to go and visit his three new friends at their haunted house. Along the way they meet Calvin O’Keefe, who Meg thinks is quite handsome. Calvin comes from a large and unhappy family that lives nearby, and has arrived at the haunted house because he felt an odd compulsion to be there, although he isn’t sure why. Together they proceed to the house, where they meet Mrs. Who, a plump woman with thick glasses who speaks in historical quotes, many in foreign languages, which she then helpfully translates. She advises them to go home and get some food and rest…but for what purpose, she will not say. Calvin comes over for supper, and the whole family takes a liking to him. Mrs. Murry can see that strange things are happening, but has faith they are happening for a good reason. Calvin and Meg talk about her father, a government physicist who went missing, and how no one will tell the family where he is. Meg starts to cry, and Calvin comforts her, but Charles Wallace interrupts and tells them it is time to go find their father. Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who arrive, and are joined by Mrs. Which, an ethereal, shimmering being. And suddenly, they are all somewhere else—a place that the three women identify as the planet Uriel. Mrs. Which materializes, wearing a peaked hat and carrying a broom, making the pun of her name perfectly clear. They have traveled by “tesser,” a way of wrinkling time and space. The women state that Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace can help rescue her father, and Mrs. Whatsit transforms into a giant winged (and surprisingly, male) centaur. They fly high into the sky, surrounded by other flying centaurs who sing an inspirational song. When they reach the peak of their journey, and the air becomes too thin to breathe, the children see a large, dark, and forbidding presence in the heavens; this is the darkness that has captured Meg’s father. The three women tell the horrified children that in order to rescue Mr. Murry, they must travel beyond the darkness. And here, the science behind their mode of travel is explained, a folding of space and time in dimensions beyond our own, involving concepts like tesseracts. L’Engle takes what looked like fantasy up to this point and recontextualizes it as the type of technology Arthur C. Clarke was referencing when he said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” They then travel to Orion’s Belt to visit a seer who is aptly called the “Happy Medium,” who helps the children understand the long struggle between the forces of darkness and light, and they learn that Mrs. Whatsit had been a star who sacrificed her larger existence in the fight against the darkness. The seer shows them the planet Camazotz, at the heart of the darkness, where Mr. Murry is imprisoned. They are told that the darkness will not allow the three women to accompany them; after receiving words of warning and advice, Mrs. Who gives Meg her glasses to aid her during the rescue, and off they go. The first thing Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace see in Camazotz is a neighborhood of identical houses where all the children skip ropes and bounce balls in perfect unison, and whose mothers call them in for supper at the same time. They speak to one of those mothers, who is baffled and frightened by their non-conformity. An uneasy paper carrier tells them they can find the Central Intelligence Center in the heart of the nearby city, which is the capital of Camazotz. He also refers to something called IT, which resides at that Center. They find themselves surrounded by people motivated by fear, who do not want anything to do with visitors who don’t fit in. Despite feeling an oppressive sense of foreboding, the three children enter the headquarters building. There they are exposed to the cruelty of IT, which rules the world of Camazotz through torture, intimidation, and mind control. IT uses an avatar, the Man with Red Eyes, to both cajole and threaten them. Then Charles Wallace, too confident in his mental powers, attempts to take on IT directly and ends up as a mind-controlled avatar himself. Meg uses Mrs. Who’s glasses to access her father in prison; it turns out that Dr. Murry had discovered how to tesser during his research, and had fallen into the clutches of the dark forces of IT. When IT attacks them, Dr. Murry is unable to help Charles Wallace, but manages to tesser himself, Meg, and Calvin to another planet that orbits the same star as Camazotz. Its inhabitants are repellent to look at, but kind and capable, and one of them, who Meg dubs “Aunt Beast,” nurses Meg back to health. Mrs. Whatsit, Who, and Which finally arrive, revealing that only Meg possesses the qualities needed to rescue Charles Wallace from the clutches of IT. Thus, she must decide whether she can face the pain and fear of returning to Camazotz to do so. I’ll leave the recap here, as I highly recommend the book to everyone, and don’t want to spoil the ending. Final Thoughts A Wrinkle in Time is still read and remembered today for some very good reasons. Madeleine L’Engle was a marvelous author who had a knack for speaking to young readers at their level without talking down to them. The book has an entertaining sense of whimsy, relatable characters, a strong moral core, and is infused with a positive, thoughtful approach to religion and spirituality. While I found A Wrinkle in Time rather intense when I was young, I found myself remembering nearly every aspect of the book as I re-read it six decades later, a testimony to the power of the narrative. And despite being decades old, the book feels fresh and not at all dated. And now I turn the floor over to you: If you’ve read A Wrinkle in Time, or other books by L’Engle, I’d love to hear your thoughts on her work. And while, as I write this, the last few episodes of this season of Stranger Things have yet to air, the final season will have ended by the time this column publishes. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on the relationship between the two narratives, and any parallels between the ideas or characters in A Wrinkle in Time and the world of the TV series (or in any other works that have taken inspiration from L’Engle’s novel over the years…)[end-mark] The post From Camazotz to <i>Stranger Things</i>: <i>A Wrinkle in Time</i> by Madeleine L’Engle appeared first on Reactor.