About this title: The third book in the "Time Quartet". Charles Wallace, now 15, and Gaudior the unicorn travel through time to prevent crazed dictator Madog Branzillo from taking over the world. Charles's older sister, Meg, is still able to enter his thoughts and feelings, and thus accompanies him in spirit form, as does her cranky mother-in-law, Mrs. O'Keefe. Will Charles be able to outwit Madog Branzillo and avert a world tragedy?
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 272 p. Audience: Children/juvenile. Near Fine condition, light spine crease and little to no edgewear. Previous owner wrote name & date on first page. read more
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Clean, sound copy. Minor cover wear, yellowing pages. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 272 p. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Book is in excellent condition. ONLY Flaw is very minimal edgewear on corners. Pgs are clean and tight. SHIPS V FAST! ! Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 272 p. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Books
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780440901587ISBN:0440901588
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 272 p. Audience: Children/juvenile. Good to Very Good condition. Good, tight readable copy with typical reading wear. Some discoloration/sunfade of cover/spine. Some aging/yellowing of text pages. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Date Published: 1979-07-15
ISBN-13:9780440901587ISBN:0440901588
Description: Very Good. Mass market paperback; 256 p. Light general wear. Inside tanning. Name inside first page. Pages clean, tight, straight, unmarked. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Yearling Books
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780440401582ISBN:0440401585
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. VG-reading copy. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 304 p. Yearling Books (Paperback). Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Good. Spine is smooth. Covers show some wear at the edges and corners. Good reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Tight and square; single spine crease; light surface flaws. Inside cover and pages tanning. 272 p. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
"This third installation (or fourth, in character chronology) of the L'Engle's Time Quintet may actually be my favorite. In it, the teenage Charles Wallace is called upon to travel back in time and merge with different people, trying to change the course of the future at points where things "might-have-been." All this is in a desperate attempt to prevent nuclear disaster threatened by a South American dictator.
I always found this book to be more intricate and therefore slightly more engrossing than the two previous, in the way that Charles Wallace must visit many points in time to unravel and re-spin the chain of events leading to the present day. It emphasizes once again themes of interconnectedness, and how the smallest event, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can affect all of time going forward.
Once again the language is smooth and effective, but seems to have gained just the slightest in complexity. There also seem to be additional shades of gray throughout the characters in the book, making things more complicated than they were in "Wrinkle" and "Wind." This is one book I'll gladly come back to again and again."
"There has been news about Welsh-speaking Indians living in the Americas when what we can call modern-day Europeans arrived there. Madeleine L'Engle developed a story from this, connecting the myth of the past with present day's threat of a nuclear war, and the lives of many other people inbetween.
The main characters of the third book are still Meg and his smartly-named little-brother Charles Wallace. Meg's now married to Calvin and is expecting her baby, while Charles Wallace is a 15 years old with the small body of a 12 years old.
I really like the language employed in the Time books - it flows beautifully in my mind when I read them. But somehow I can't emphatize with Meg, although I like Charles Wallace a lot. In the first two books, Meg was almost always full of adolescent anger. Something I can understand, but I can't really stand. It frustrated me to read about Meg blurting out her anger here and there, now and then. Right now she's an adult, and the anger's still within her, but not so much anymore. I still cannot really like her - and what she does most in this book is just kything - so it leaves me room to breathe with Charles Wallace and the other characters in which he Within-es.
All in all, this is an interesting time-adventure book (especially because Charles Wallace doesn't exactly move in Space, just in Time, and he jumps from Within one body to another). By doing so, Charles Wallace tries to find the answer of why things happen in the present, and whether he can change them before something really bad happen to all mankind and the swiftly tilting planet.
But there's something that cannot sit well with me: the fact that the line of Gwydyr is said to be tainted, so his offspring are always a bunch of evil brutes. I don't know - it's like saying "You're sinful, you're wrong, you're bound to be evil, just because you are the descendant of someone who's wronged in the past." That just left me feeling uncomfortable about the whole issue."
"I read a wrinkle in time as a child and loved it. For some reason, however, I never finished the series. I am feeling a need to return to simplicity of late and re-read my old favorite and the other books in the series I had never picked up.
I just read the last pages of a swiftly tilting planet with a sleeping puppy in my lap (very appropriate if you remember the story). I absolutely loved it. I loved the love and connection between Charles Wallace and Meg, the interconnectedness of beings under God over time and space, and most of all the fact that small and seemingly insignificant people and events--good and evil, selfish and redemptive--matter both now and in eternity. A great read!!"
"I re-read all of these in a row: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and this conclusion. What a difference in quality. But this isn't the typical "gold, silver, brass" progression of a trilogy. It's more like 'gold, silver, mud.'
A Swiftly Tilting Planet is terribly dated and even racist. There's a bad guy in Patagonia who wants to use The Bomb and Charles Wallace can only fix the problem by traveling back in time and space to make sure the right father begets the guy with his finger on the button. The characters actually talk about bloodlines and blood here. So in this scenario, genetics create destiny.
Don't even get me started on this strange, ancient connection L'Engle cooks up between Welsh people and Native Americans in Patagonia who are envisioned as living in perfect harmony with each other and their environment. They're beyond Noble Savage and back to the Garden of Eden. The white people bring original sin--well, in the form of a Cain and Abel story--and it gets mixed into the bloodline of the Patagonian Indians. It's better than original sin coming from the Native Americans but not much. And anyway in the end, you can tell the good guy 'cause he has blue eyes. What does this say to you?
Oh, Madeleine, you hurt me with this conclusion to the trilogy, really you did."
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