A Wrinkle in Time

Title: A Wrinkle in Time
Author: Madeleine L'Engle
ISBN: 0440498058

Other Books in Series: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters

Plot Summary: Meg Murry and her brother Charles Wallace, the children of scientists, are both misfits: Meg does not fit in socially with her peers, and Charles Wallace, although a genius, mystifies his teachers. Their father is currently missing; before he left, he was working on a theoretical concept known as a tesseract. Together with Meg's friend Calvin O'Keefe, also a social outcast, they make the acquaintance of an eccentric old woman, Mrs. Whatsit. Along with her "sisters" Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, they transport the three through space and time via tesseract, which they explain as a "folding" of the space-time continuum. During their travels, they find out that the universe is being threatened by a malicious force, known as the Black Thing or IT, which is holding their father captive on a planet called Camazotz. The Earth, as revealed to them by the Happy Medium, is also in danger of being engulfed by the Black Thing's darkness. Partial exposure to IT injures Meg, who is nursed back to health by a friendly, telepathic creature she comes to call Aunt Beast. Once Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace reach Camazotz, they find a "Stepford Planet," a suburban hell inhabited by people all like each other, leading identical lives, under IT's thrall. In order to free her brother and father from IT, who takes them both captive, Meg must confront IT with all the things IT cannot stand: love, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of individual happiness.