(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, Mary Grace and Deborah reread Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic A Wrinkle in TIme, about…well, it’s hard to describe what it’s about. A troubled girl. A missing father. A genius brother. Three mysterious women. Interplanetary adventure. An evil, throbbing brain. None of this does justice to a book that two science fiction-hating girls ended up loving, and that their grown-up selves had a wonderful time returning to.

Here’s the original cover, which perfectly captures its Cold War atmosphere:

Mentioned on this episode:

Listening for Madeleine, Leonard Marcus’s book of interviews with people in L’Engle’s life.

Cynthia Zarin’s controversial 2004 New Yorker profile of L’Engle.

The ALA website listing the 100 most challenged books of the 1990s, with A Wrinkle in Time at #23.

The recent PEN America report on book banning in the United States.

A 2001 New York Times interview with L’Engle.

The trailer to the 2018 movie version of A Wrinkle in Time.

The Paris Review blog post where Mary Grace read that Madeleine L’Engle rewrote her novel A House Like a Lotus to give it a new protagonist.

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms. You can listen to it on Buzzsprout here.

You can find Debby’s author interviews on her blog, Books Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.