Teen, YA or Older Reader Unicorn Book Feature – A Swiftly Tilting Planet

August 21, 2023 · by sybrinapublishing

Teen, YA or Older Reader Unicorn Book Feature A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Yearling Books) by Madel L’engle (1991-11-01) by A Wrinkle in Time

Get it at Amazon.

A Couple of Reviews To Help You Choose

Amazon Review

Doll-ar5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book with an equally heartbreaking and heart-warming ending Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2018

Even before reading this book, I quickly figured out it is the fan favorite companion novel to A Wrinkle In Time and, now that I have finished reading it, I will agree it is definitely well earned.

In this book, Meg and Charles Wallace are off on another adventure. This time Calvin isn’t there to help them because he’s at a business conference, but it’s okay because someone else is there to help the two of them – a unicorn, named Gaudior. Gaudior will help Charles Wallace to go through time to help stop something bad from happening before it has a chance to – and Meg will help Charles as well.

A lot of the negative reviews point out that the similar names in all the generations of the characters was annoying/one of the reasons they didn’t like it, but I didn’t really mind that at all. Yes it was slightly disorienting but I found it funny more than anything else.

Another common theme in a lot of negative reviews I read is they didn’t like how we rarely heard from either Charles or Meg’s POV throughout most of the story, but once again I didn’t find this much of a nuisance. I understood why it was done and the message Ms. L’Engle was trying to send through it.

The only negative thing I suppose I will say about it is that I am not sure the Native American history is accurate at all, especially in white people’s treatment of them. Except for one dude, overall my ancestors (white people) treated the Native Americans as friends and that… doesn’t sound historically accurate at all. But I suppose since this book is supposed to be a message of love/peace she tried to focus more on that than on historical accuracy……..

GoodReads Review

Beth rated it it was amazing Shelves: project-nostalgia, reviewed, favorites Five stars for enjoyment and nostalgia and quality of writing. This is so, so formative for me. So many of the things I love in literature today are present in this book. A Swiftly Tilting Planet has runes and myth and might-have-beens, and it does time travel wonderfully. (Adult-me wonders if L’Engle was referencing Barrie and Dear Brutus with her might-have-beens; child-me had never heard of a might-have-been before.)

This is lyrical and beautiful. And it still makes me desperate to see a model of a tesseract.

Note: I just spent ten minutes searching my old journal for notes on the blue eyes/brown eyes aspect. I know I wrote notes on that a few years ago, about how it really rubbed me the wrong way. It didn’t so much on this reread – but it’s there nonetheless. This isn’t a perfect book. But it is a really, really good one.

I did find this, from a speech L’Engle gave:

One time I was in the kitchen drinking tea with my husband and our young son, and they got into an argument about ice hockey. I do not feel passionate about ice hockey. They do. Finally our son said. “But Daddy, you don’t understand.” And my husband said, reasonably, “It’s not that I don’t understand, Bion. It’s just that I don’t agree with you.”

To which the little boy replied hotly, “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t understand.”

I think we all feel that way, but it takes a child to admit it.

Find more great unicorn books for teens, ya and older readers at Sybrina’s Unicorn BookStore.