Great books that make you wonder about the universe and open your mind to new possibilities. ( )

_A Wrinkle in Time_ has its problems, but interesting characters and a good story make it possible to overlook them. The five-year-old, amazingly intelligent Charles Wallace Murry speaks to all of us who had problems in childhood because we were too smart. The mysterious disappearance of Meg and Charles Wallace's father, the quest to rescue him, and the battle with the collectivist uniformity imposed by the entity called IT add up to an exciting plot, and intriguing beings such as Mrs. Whatsit and Aunt Beast populate the story.

But there is an unpleasant current of mysticism running through it all. There is the constant implication that human knowledge is inferior because we acquire it through our senses rather than just perceiving what things "are," whatever that means. Mr. Murry declares that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose."

In _A Wind in the Door_, the mysticism becomes unbearable. We now have Naming, with a capital N, which doesn't mean giving names to things, but something (we never learn quite what) of vast significance. Stars are presented as intelligent beings (this was true in _Wrinkle_ too, but briefly enough to ignore), and it's posited that each mitochondrion in our bodies contains a whole population of complex, submicroscopic, intelligent beings. The science is bad; D'Engle thinks mitochondria produce oxygen, and she doesn't seem to understand that it takes many years for the light from distant stars to reach us. There is a being called a "cherubim"; the use of the plural as singular is intentional, but the word still grates. The story even takes the idea that talking to plants encourages them seriously.

I haven't gone on to the third and fourth novels in the set. I don't think I want to.

Highly recommended for any reader, or any age. I first read this series in junior high. That was a long time ago. I am glad I finally have it on my shelves. ( )

This series is amazing! Thought provoking enough for adults, but simplistic enough (mostly) in its language for a much younger reader. L'Engle has been one of my favorite authors since childhood and remains so today. ( )

First read these when I was a boy; then read them to my first daughter (now 30) and about a year ago to my second (now 7). These are very interesting to bright kids: imagination-stretching. From my perspective as an adult, I find it a little disconcerting how many intelligent writers who work in this vein fall back so readily on fundamentally Christian paradigms, as though they can't quite operate without that ready-made cultural scaffolding. Still, this sequence is quite brilliant in its way.

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