Series: Book 2 in the The Time Quintet series
Rating: ****
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Lang:en
Summary
"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden,"
announces six-year-old Charles Wallace Murry in the opening
sentence of
The Wind in the Door. His older sister, Meg, doubts
it. She figures he's seen
something strange, but dragons--a "dollop of dragons,"
a "drove of dragons," even a "drive of dragons"--seem highly
unlikely. As it turns out, Charles Wallace is right about the
dragons--though the sea of eyes (merry eyes, wise eyes,
ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing)
and wings (in constant motion) is actually a benevolent
cherubim (of a singularly plural sort) named Proginoskes who
has come to help save Charles Wallace from a serious
illness. In her usual masterful way, Madeleine L'Engle jumps
seamlessly from a child's world of liverwurst and cream cheese
sandwiches to deeply sinister, cosmic battles between good and
evil. Children will revel in the delectably chilling
details--including hideous scenes in which a school principal
named Mr. Jenkins is impersonated by the Echthroi (the evil
forces that tear skies, snuff out light, and darken planets).
When it becomes clear that the Echthroi are putting Charles
Wallace in danger, the only logical course of action is for Meg
and her dear friend Calvin O'Keefe to become small enough to go
inside Charles Wallace's body--into one of his mitochondria--to
see what's going wrong with his farandolae. In an illuminating
flash on the interconnectedness of all things and the
relativity of size, we realize that the tiniest problem can
have mammoth, even intergalactic ramifications. Can this
intrepid group voyage through time and space and muster all
their strength of character to save Charles Wallace? It's an
exhilarating, enlightening, suspenseful journey that no child
should miss. The other books of the Time quartet, continuing the
adventures of the Murry family, are __;
, which won the American Book Award; and .
(Ages 9 and older)
--Karin Snelson
"The chief characters of...A Wrinkle in Time return in a
complex sci-fi/fantasy adventure...Meg and Calvin O'Keefe are
enlisted again to fight evil, this time in the shape of the
Echthroi, which are spreading through the universe."-Starred,
School Library Journal
Amazon.com Review
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