There are people all over the world with children in elementary school and a lot of those children are probably not the biggest fans of sitting still long enough to read a good book. They might struggle with the very act of reading or they might just not like it. Then there are the elementary learners who just haven’t found the right book.

“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle tells us about the amazing journey that Meg Murry and her youngest brother Charles Wallace, who many people call her “idiot little brother,” after an eccentric stranger stumbles into their kitchen on a stormy night. The stranger called Mrs. Whatsit leaves just as suddenly as she arrives but not without shaking the children’s mother to the core with just one word. After that night we find out about the struggle that the Murry Family has gone through after the disappearance of Meg’s father who was experimenting with the fifth dimension of time travel and something called a tesseract, the word that Mrs. Whatsit mentioned that night. Meg and Charles Wallace are taken on a trip across space with Meg’s new friend Calvin with the assistance of Mrs. Whatsit and a few other eccentric character in order to fight the forces of evil with wit and courage.

This book is well written as well as being creative. I would say it’s a good book for any elementary school child between third and fifth grade to pick up and read. The heart-warming characters and strong timeline allows fairly new readers to follow along without being thrown for a loop or loosing focus. The journey that Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace take shows us that being unique and having faults isn’t a bad thing and sometimes these are the things that makes everyone special. Thinking outside of the box helps us accomplish amazing things and allows us to grow.

Though it is true that a child in third or fifth grade isn’t going to understand some of the more in-depth subjects that “A Wrinkle in Time” touches on, it is still a fun read for new readers. Reading this book as an adult helps readers remember that it is okay to think differently and that thinking this way isn’t always a bad thing. Exploring the Earth and the whole universe takes us to new heights that we might not have thought about while thinking inside the box.