I might have mentioned once or twice that Madeleine L’Engle is one of my all-time favorite authors, and I heard such good things about this from so many places that of course I had to try it.

A Wrinkle in Time: the Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
It’s always dicey making a graphic novel adaptation of a well-loved book – really, if the author wanted the book to be a graphic novel, why wouldn’t she just have written it that way to begin with? But this is clearly a love letter from someone who loves A Wrinkle in Time just as much as me, expressing this in a graphic novel rather than, say, a book review or knitting, as I might. (Though I’m not sure what I’d knit as a Wrinkle homage piece.) Larson does not cut out any pieces of plot or characters, and even the dialogue was left intact. She keeps the famous opening lines, but mostly her artwork replaces the descriptions from the book. Her illustrations show incredible attention to all the details in the book, keeping them all straight better than my own head does while I’m reading. There were funny details, like the stairs drawn with an arrow pointing out the creaky step and a little knife flying out from Meg’s eyes, without saying in words that she’s looking daggers. There’s also Meg’s somewhat straggly short haircut, and the black eye that she gets in the first chapter. I had never thought about the bruise after her mother looks at it, just before Mrs Whatsit’s midnight arrival, but naturally, as the book happens over the course of just a couple of days, it wouldn’t have time to heal. Larson keeps this in mind, and shows Meg with that bruise all the way through. The pictures are lovingly drawn, and everything comes together beautifully to bring this beloved story to life visually. Of course, Wrinkle can stand on its own, but this is a well-done and enjoyable addition.