In the months leading up to the release of the A Wrinkle in Time movie, we've asked authors of middle grade and young adult titles to revisit one of the first four books in Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet. For March, Nic Stone (Dear Martin), looks at A Wrinkle in Time.
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| photo: Nigel Livingstone | |
My first time reading A Wrinkle in Time, I... didn't get it. It was fifth grade, maybe sixth, and all I really knew was that this girl Meg Murray was trying to get her dad back and there was a bunch of stuff in the book that felt... funny.
I liked Meg though.
I liked her fire and her fury and her fierce determination.
She reminded me of me (even though that whole Aunt Beast encounter was mad strange and all I understood about a tesseract was that the aftereffects didn't seem real fun). 
Then, after the film was announced, I read A Wrinkle in Time aloud to my four-year-old. As I reread, many of my original sentiments were reaffirmed: the creatures on Ixchel are strange (though I now appreciate Aunt Beast's care for Meg) and I'm still totally fine with never experiencing fifth dimension travel. Ever.
But.
There's still Meg.
Meg, who understands very little about the things happening around her and who is subjected to negative forces on almost every planet, Earth included. Meg, who, despite that lack of understanding and those negative forces, keeps fighting, her heart and mind fixed on what she believes in.
To me, that's really the point of A Wrinkle in Time. As an adult, I find myself constantly faced with things I don't understand: evils like racism, sexism, homophobia, fear of the other. Black Thing(s). ITs in various iterations.
But hope is out there waiting to be found. Joy. Love. Peace. Friendship.
I believe they're there. And--okay, fine: even if I have to travel through the fifth dimension to find them (ugh!), I will.
It's certainly what Meg would do. --Nic Stone