Series: Book 4 in the The Time Quintet series
Rating: ****
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Lang:en
Summary
We've all done it. In the frigid depths of winter we've
wished we could be magically transported to someplace warm and
sunny. But most people don't have genius parents who just
happen to be working on a scientific experiment with time
travel at the moment of our wish. Sandy and Dennys Murry, the
"normal" boys in a family of geniuses, suddenly find themselves
trudging through a blazing-hot desert, seeking a far-off oasis
for shade. Their desperate wandering brings them face-to-face
with history--biblical history. Soon they're feeling right at
home with Noah and his family. Even so, the urgent question is,
how will Sandy and Dennys get back to their own place and time
before the floods--the many waters--come? As they begin to
cross the invisible border into adulthood, the twins must
confront their ability to resist temptation and embrace
integrity. In
Many Waters, Madeleine L'Engle continues the Murry
family saga, which includes __;
; and , which won the American Book Award.
L'Engle's mystical mix of science fiction and fantasy, time and
space travel, history, morals, religion, and culture once again
urges her many adoring readers to stretch their minds and
hearts to understand why the world is the way it is. (Ages 9
and older)
--Emilie Coulter
Grade 6 Up Fans of the Murry family will welcome this
tangental return to the "Time Trilogy" books (Farrar) as
L'Engle spins another uniquely metaphysical fantasy, this time
using the twins, Sandy and Dennys, at age 15, as her
protagonists. On a cold day, Dennys absent-mindedly requests
his father's computer to take them "someplace warm." Suddenly,
it's the twins' turn to tessor, and they end up in a desert so
hot that they nearly die of sun poisoning. As they meet the
small people who inhabit it, including Lemach, Shem, Ham,
Japheth, and finally, Noah, they realize that they are in the
world as it existed before the Great Flood. What follows is an
entertaining description of life in this ancient time and
place, when angels and fallen angels walked the earth, and
small mammoths could call unicorns into existence. The story is
more tension than plot: the tension of the Nephilim, fallen
angels whose power on earth seems somehow threatened by the
mysterious arrival of the twins; the sexual tension that both
Sandy and Dennys feel as they are drawn to Yalith, Noah's
youngest daughter; and the tension that readers feel, wondering
how those protagonists not mentioned in Genesis (the twins and
Yalith) are going to survive the Flood, which is plainly
imminent throughout the book. This suspense lacks the urgency
found in the other books of the trilogy, however, mainly
because the characters are subservient to atmosphere, incident,
and ideas. It is as hard for readers to tell the twins apart as
it is for Noah. One is curious as to how they will escape, but
hardly worried. The strength of this book lies in its haunting
descriptions of a time resonant of our own. Its weakness is a
pat ending and characters so slightly drawn that we hardly
care. Christine Behrman, New York Public Library
Amazon.com Review
From School Library Journal
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.