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A Wrinkle in Time (pub. 1962)
Goodreads; isfdb; Madeleine L'Engle; TV Tropes; Wikipedia

The first character we meet in "A Wrinkle in Time" is 13-year-old Meg Murry. She has two brilliant scientists for parents (her father is a physicist and her mother a biologist, but they both work mainly in theoretical ideas), twin 10-year-old brothers, Sandy and Dennys, and a 5-year-old brother named Charles Wallace. Meg isn't very good in school, except for mathematics, and often gets into fights, usually to defend Charles Wallace, who many people think of as dumb. In fact, he is very intelligent (probably the most intelligent person in the Murry family), and special in other ways; he just doesn't know how to interact with most people. Well, the whole family is special, though everyone just sees them as strange - except for Sandy and Dennys, who do a good job of acting normal: perhaps of above average intelligence, but not seemingly special; they are also more sociable and athletic than their kin.

One dark and stormy night, Meg, Charles Wallace, and their mother are downstairs having some cocoa and sandwiches, along with their dog Fortinbras, when a strange woman named Mrs Whatsit (who Charles has met before) arrives unexpectedly at their door. She stops in for a bit to rest, and to get the water out of her boots, and she has a bit of an odd conversation with the Murrys. Before she leaves, she says "there is such a thing as a tesseract," which is especially odd, because tesseracts are a concept Mrs. Murry had been working on with her husband, when he disappeared about a year ago. Actually, he hadn't been around much, because his work took him away a great deal of the time, and alot of it was for the government, and classified. It was about a year ago that his letters stopped coming, and no one would (or could) tell the Murrys what had become of him.

The day after the storm, after Meg gets home from school, Charles Wallace convinces her to go with him to see Mrs Whatsit. On the way, the two of them and Fortinbras meet up with a 14-year-old boy from Meg's school, named Calvin O'Keefe. He's also very bright, but popular because he plays sports. People don't know it, but he's rather special, too. Sometimes he gets feelings about things, and such a feeling is what compelled him to show up at this particular place at this particular time. He was destined to meet Meg and Charles Wallace. They're going to be good friends, that's another feeling Calvin has. It's a good thing, because he doesn't really get on well with the rest of his family, who aren't as smart nor as kind as he is. Anyway, Meg, Charles, and Calvin end up meeting one of Mrs Whatsit's two friends, Mrs Who. Later they again meet up with Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which. The three of them tesser (or wrinkle, as Mrs Whatsit says) the children to other worlds. The three women, it turns out, are not human at all, these are just forms they have assumed. They're actually beings billions of years old.

There is a darkness slowly spreading across the Universe, and Mr. Murry's work poses a potential threat to the darkness. Of course, people and beings from many worlds have been fighting the darkness for a very long time. Which leads to a point about all these books, something I've always liked in various works of fiction: the intermingling of spirituality, magic, and science. This same point may also be conceived by some as rather controversial. People who have fought the darkness throughout history include all the great artists, scientists, and religious figures. Everyone who sheds some kind of light on the world. At times these books can seem rather Christian-based, but they can also seem rather New Age-y. I, for one, appreciate the concept that all religions can bring light to the world; that they could work hand in hand with one another, and with science. Though I don't suppose most of the people involved in the fight have been actually aware of it as such, at all.... And I can certainly see that some deeply religious people would take offense at such ideas.

Eventually, the children must go off on their own to find Mr. Murry, who is being held on a world controlled by the darkness. The children manage to rescue Mr. Murry from a mind-controlling entity called "IT," but not before IT takes control of Charles Wallace. After Dr. Murry, Calvin, and Meg escape the planet, they are helped by some aliens who fight the darkness, and also by Mrs Whatsit, Who, and Which. Meg (who has always been the closest to Charles Wallace, on an almost psychic level) has to return by herself to rescue her brother, and finally they all return to Earth. Mrs Whatsit hasn't time to say goodbye, before the three Mrs W's vanish, and the book ends, quite abruptly.

The book has been adapted twice by Disney: first in a 2004 TV movie, and later in a 2018 theatrical film.

Followed by A Wind in the Door