Abandoned by Booklikes

So this series is one of the books that I love reading again and again. Reading as a kid is definitely different than one reads a child. To me when I was a child, it seemed highly plausible that one could travel within one's brother and heal them. As an adult, it took a little more getting use to.

The second book in the Time Quintet series finds Meg and Calvin doing whatever they can to rescue Meg's brother Charles Wallace. Meg and Calvin are literally fighting against nothingness in order to save Charles Wallace.

So Meg has always been my favorite. A girl who wants to be beautiful like her mother, but who is ridiculously smart and loves her little brother. I also love the character of Calvin and how much he loves Meg and her family and I ached for him because of the neglect that was going on in his own home. I always found Charles Wallace a bit too much for me. He seemed like a wise Buddha in the first book and in this one as well. I still like the character, but Meg has always been the heart of the books for me from the first.

The main plot is a bit much for a kid to work their head around I think. I remember reading this as a kid and saying echo what? The heck. But I love the tie in that L'Engle did in this books with science and religion. She was always able to show a wonderful harmony between reason and faith that I wish I saw in more books today. To have the fate of Charles Wallace to also be tied up into what was going on in the universe was clever.

The writing is superb and I got teary eyed in parts as a kid and did so again as an adult.

“Progo,' Meg asked. 'You memorized the names of all the stars - how many are there?'
How many? Great heavens, earthling. I haven't the faintest idea.'
But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.'
I did. All the stars in all the galaxies. And that's a great many.'
But how many?'
What difference does it make? I know their names. I don't know how many there are. It's their names that matter.

The flow was no problem and I really didn't have any problems while reading this now. I think as a kid I stumbled over a lot of the words and went to the family dictionary to look them up. Of course some of them didn't show up so I remember just thinking that "echthroi" was just another name for IT (A Wrinkle in Time, Quintet Book #1) and left it at that. I did find "mitochondria" though and I did spend a fun afternoon reading about them. Of course I can't recall much except that once I read the dictionary definition, I went to the family Encyclopedia (remember those) and looked at the images and history behind the word.

The ending was great and I thought was a nice segue to the third book, A Swifing Tilting Planet (Time Quintet #3).