Rereading A Wrinkle in Time After a Double Shift

I was obsessed with this at ten, asked my mom if I could do another book report on it, nobody made me. Picked it back up last month after a double, curious whether it would hold up or, like most of what you loved at ten, come apart on a second look. It really holds up. Saw somebody online call it “the Wizard of Oz, Christian style,” and that’s closer than I expected, three odd women, a road through strange country, a kid trying to get home with someone she loves.

Meg’s the one I remembered clearest, a kid who’s bad at school in the specific way of someone who’s actually smart and knows it, angry about it too. Charles Wallace I’d forgotten was precocious, creepily so, to the degree of being a miniature grown up. The villain’s an evil being that forces conformity, a giant disembodied brain pulsing away on Camazotz, and I remembered it scarier than it read this time, but it’s still a good design, no face to punch.

Didn’t remember how much the middle drags, the travel-between-worlds stuff moves fast but there’s a stretch on Camazotz where the pacing sags. Also didn’t remember how skeptical some readers get about the “wrinkling” of time itself, the actual science of it, which barely gets explained and honestly doesn’t need to, it’s a kid’s book. And I’d forgotten how openly religious it gets underneath the science, which I didn’t clock as a kid because nobody explains theology to a nine year old mid-chapter.

Still the ending gets me, the idea that Meg saves her brother with her worst quality turned right side up. Wouldn’t hand this to just anyone. I appreciate Meg’s stubborn streak now in a way I didn’t at ten, and I’d hand this to a kid who’s got the same streak and doesn’t know yet it’s useful.