Madeleine L'Engle

“In a sense, it’s science fiction. But it’s laced through with a deep thread of theology. The protagonist, Meg Murray, encounters angels and she encounters an absolute evil. In this book, a deity—in the sense of absolute good—does not show themselves, but their subordinates, the messengers, the ones who help to do the will of the supreme being, are all very present. The spiritual elements appear side by side with the physics aspects in a way that you don’t often see being done either in children’s literature or in speculative fiction.” Read more...

The Best Speculative Fiction About Gods and Godlike Beings

Karen Lord, Novelist

The ‘wrinkle in time’ alluded to in this book’s title is a tesseract, a fifth-dimensional folding of the fabric of space and time. It allows the heroes of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel, Meg Murry, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe to travel between worlds to save the universe from The Black Thing, a powerful evil appearing as a vast dark cloud. Essentially the personification of evil, one would be forgiven for mistaking it for Stranger Thing’s Mindflayer! And the dark planet of Camazotz? It could be a stand-in for ‘The Upside Down’, a place which has succumbed to the Black Thing and where Meg’s father is trapped in a catatonic state. A Wrinkle in Time is timeless YA science fantasy; it’s a book that will deeply resonate with those who like Stranger Things.

From our article Books like Stranger Things