Destiny and Wrinkle in Time (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Friday, July 21, 2017, 12:34 (2769 days ago) @ General Vagueness

The big takeaway from this thread to me is that you all come across like cultural buffoons. A Wrinkle in Time is one of the greatest young adult novels of all time, and you don't really need the "young adult" classification.

I was gobsmacked that Cody hadn't read it, but just as gobsmacked by the ongoing discussion by some of you.

It is a great book but it's solidly a kids' book, not even young adult, it's for kids. No one dies or suffers permanent injury despite it being what you would expect from the circumstances, several characters and places act as what you might call "silliness relief" (where something being weird and irrelevant is used to lighten the tension in a similar way to comedy relief), and of course the main character is 13, and her brother and friend who tag along are also children. Yes it gets into fourth-dimensional geometry but it also does it as simply as it can, takes half a chapter just to explain it, and even includes an illustration or two to help. Yes it touches on child abuse and parental abandonment but it only touches on them, at no point does it really examine them. Yes it has religious overtones but IMHO they make the book strange more than they make it adult.
It's a great book to introduce kids to science fiction, or help them towards more out-there science fiction, but it's not very "grown up". Not every good book needs to be "grown up".
No idea on the "girls read it" thing, I encountered it because it was required reading in 4th or 5th grade (sounds like a kids' book, yeah?).
As for Cody having not even heard of it, I'm surprised enough to think he might be lying, but at the same time he's one of those weird people that seem to have somehow gone through life without experiencing all the things people normally experience and then come to them later with too much emotion and scrutiny (but then, he approaches lots of things with too much emotion and scrutiny).

I disagree with several of your notions of what would make it more than a kids book, but I'm just glad you read it and seemed to like it.