A Wrinkle in Time

Why ask me? This book is a classic that goes beyond all internet reviews. School librarians and teachers will forever be recommending this book, and with good reason. If you're going to read it as an adult, don't expect too much, but kids will remember it forever. I just read it to my children and we went to see the movie. It's a cerebral, magical, wonder-filled book that is great for children from 8-12. I highly recommend it for reading aloud or reading solo. The kids loved it. It's imaginative and adventurous, with plenty of laughs and cries. The thing I liked most about it was reading a children's book that quotes Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Cervantes in their original languages. That's the kind of book I want to read to my kids.

If it's so great, then why only three stars? Honestly it's a little hard to read. This book was notoriously rejected over sixty times by publishers who thought it was too hard for kids to read, and I might agree with them. I read it aloud, and I often had to stop and re-read awkward sentences. Also there's the structure of the story itself: the movie is getting a lot of heat for this but trust me, the problems are there in the book. The story is just not that strong, but honestly the story doesn't seem to be the point. The point seems to be the relationships between the family members, the cool worlds they visit and Meg's arc, which is good despite the weaknesses of the plot as a whole. Meg still grows up quite a bit over the course of the story and solves the final problem, but I'm too much of a bitter adult to really get it.

On the other hand, the kids loved it, so why not read it to them?