A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, first published in 1962, is considered a classic today and has been in print ever since its first publication. Hope Larson's graphic novel, published in 2012, follows the exact same story in a different format. It is a science fiction novel about the Meg Murray daughter of two scientists. Meg's father has been missing. Meg's beautiful mother knows that father is not dead, but missing. Meg's youngest brother Charles Wallace is a prodigy of sorts who introduces Meg and their mother to Mrs. Whatsit, who mentions a tesseract, which is something that their father was working on before he went missing. Meg and Charles eventually meet a boy named Calvin, and the three of them stumble upon a haunted house, which they enter to find Mrs. Whatsit, and her strange friend Mrs. Who, and they promise to help the Murray children find their father. That night Calvin eats dinner with Meg and her family, and they form a bond. Later in the evening, Charles Wallace declares it time to find their father. They meet a third strange being Mrs. Which, and Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin learn that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which are supernatural, time-and-space-traveling beings who take the children to a dark planet, Camazotz, that has been taken over by an evil presence, referred to as "The Black Thing" that is attempting to take over the universe. It is explained to the children that they must stick together and not succumb to the evil presence in order to come back whole and safe and save their father. The children do find their father, though Charles Wallace had to succumb to the evil to find him. Father takes hold of Meg and Calvin and "tessers" them off the planet to a strange planet where they are cared for by a group of loving "beasts," one of which Meg refers to as Aunt Beast. Aunt Beast restores happy, loving thoughts to Meg, who must return to the evil planet to save Charles before the group can go home. Meg is successful when she realizes that the evil can be fought off with love. The family is then happily reunited back on earth, including Calvin, whose relationship with Meg has turned into young romance.

Hope Larson adapts L'Engle's classic novel into a graphic novel; so, it's the same material, but in a different format. Having never read the original, this was an entirely new story for me. At times, I felt the science of the science fiction portions of the story could have used a better explanation, and I wondered if the adaptation suffered from losing some explanatory bits in exchange for a new format. However, none of this really took away from the story too much for me. It was still easy to follow and enjoy, despite not really understanding tesseracts (but then again, I don't know that I would despite lots of explanation because it's not like quantum physics is an easy science to understand). The artwork is done entirely in black, white, and blue. For me personally, I love a simplistic color palette for a graphic novel. I believe it has a way of keeping the words and dialogue of equal importance to the pictures. The artwork itself isn't particularly intricate or beautiful in my opinion, but it works. The pictures of space and fantastic creatures have a sort of simplistic beauty that doesn't overwhelm the story and keeps your eyes moving across the page, from picture box to picture box, making the book an incredibly quick read. This book makes me want to read the original because the story is so good. And I can see the artwork being a really great way to get reluctant readers more interested in the story. I love that the main character of this story is female (despite the fact that I find her character annoying at times; she complains a lot) because science fiction stories are overwhelming lead by male characters.

This is a great story with a good, typical fantasy message ("love trumps evil"). Larson's graphic novel format gives the book a refreshing new face and way to read the classic. The cartoon style artwork is simple and not distracting from the dialogue and prose pieces in the story. Meg Murray was one of the first female protagonists created for a science fiction novel, which is a great trivia tidbit to add when suggesting this story to young readers. I'd definitely suggest this version (and the original) to other readers, but this graphic novel version is especially a great suggestion to those readers of graphic novels and comics who need to ease their way into reading more classics.