A wise man once said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" but would it really? Is our name unimportant? I myself have used three names commonly in my life. Each has brought out different qualities of my personality, made me think of myself in different ways, changed who I was and how I presented myself to the world. In some cases names do matter.

A Wind in the Door, the second book in Madeline L'Engle's time trilogy, is a book about the importance of names, the importance of individuals and individuality and how one being can completely alter the fabric of the universe. It is a book about how everyone and everything breathes and contributes, about how even the most hated can be loved, about how even the most set in their ways can change.

It is also a book that tells us to look beyond appearances, to throw away assumptions based on size and stature, to fully consider that a submicroscopic being living inside a galaxy that is man is as important as the man living inside a galaxy is as important as the galaxy living inside the universe.

Like its predecessor A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door offers a quest that blends fantasy and reality, a quest to save the life of a loved one and to save the Universe all at once. This time, beloved Charles Wallace Murry is sick, very sick. He's dying. And sister Meg, friend Calvin O'Keefe, and a cast of others must save him and keep the balance of good and evil in the universe. In doing so they travel to a far distant galaxy, watch a star being born from above, and travel inside the mitochondria inside Charles Wallace's body.

They learn that size and time are relative, that even the smallest organism is important to maintain balance. Charles is dying because the farandolae inside his mitochondria are revolting. They want to remain children forever, free to frolic and play, free from the responsibility of adulthood. Our troup must convince them to deepen, to plant themselves in the mitochondria and move on to the next phase of their life.

A Wind in the Door showcases many of the same characters we first met in A Wrinkle in Time set the year before. Meg Murry is still insecure, Calvin the same lovable carrot-top. Charles Wallace is now in school, getting beat up regularly for being too smart, too different. Even Mr. Jenkins, Meg's nemesis, former principal of the junior high and now elementary school principal, makes a return appearance and in fact plays a rather large role in this story.

But it doesn't seem that Meg really remembers her previous adventure nor learned anything from it. This Meg is more scared, more whiny than the younger Meg. She seems less willing to accept the fantastical, to understand the lessons she is asked to learn. Perhaps this is L'Engle's way to show how we change as we get older, lose some of our ability to look beyond the surface and accept the impossible. But Calvin is slightly older than Meg and he is the same unflappable supportive wonderful guy from the first book.

A Wind in the Door was written a full 10 years after A Wrinkle in Time and perhaps L'Engle just lost touch with her character a bit. I'm not really sure why Meg changed, but it wasn't a change for the better, and having just re-read this book after reading the first, the change is very obvious and very irritating. I want to scream at the author, yell at her for ruining my favorite character. Okay, ruining may be a bit of an overstatement. But certainly this Meg is a different person, someone who reacts differently to situations than the Meg we met before.

There are also several new characters, most notably Proginoskes the cherubim who looks like a drove of dragons when he materializes. Proginoskes is a namer, someone who recognizes the inherent qualities and individualism of each living organism and helps him live fully up to his destiny, to live up to his name. Proginoskes is Meg's mentor and partner in this adventure, her teacher although ostensibly he is a fellow student on their journey of learning. It is Proginoskes who teaches Meg about kything, that there is something to love in even the most seemingly unlovable person, that time and size and appearance do not matter just the essence of the being.

He too teaches Meg the harsh realities of the echthroi, that there are people who want to un-name, to remove the essence of individuals, to destroy life and order. He also teaches that sometimes you can win by voluntarily giving up, by not letting the enemy beat you. This is a lesson taught in A Wrinkle in Time by the stars who fought the Black Thing, but it is more real here, more of a theme. I'm not sure I agree with this tenet. Sometimes there is also merit in fighting the good fight even if you are destined to lose.

A Wind in the Door is almost more of a pre-cursor to A Swiftly Tilting Planet than a sequel to A Wrinkle in Time. Although there are some sparse references to the previous adventure - mention of being on a shadowed planet, for instance, related to the Black Thing introduced in and central to the first book - there are very few real continuation points. Although similarly focused on Meg, offering a similar type of adventure, and containing a similar fight of good versus evil, here L'Engle has mostly abandoned the concept of the Black Thing and introduced that of the echthroi, purely evil beings for the good people to fight. She has also introduced kything, a sort of emotionally-based telepathy, as a communication mode. Kything isn't entirely new - it was clear in the first book that Charles Wallace could sense things about his sister and his mother - but it certainly is greatly expanded on and explained in much more detail here. Both the echthroi and kything are central elements of A Swiftly Tilting Planet. You could look on this book as background information for book three, although certainly that book stands on its own without need for such explanation.

This is a world of fantasy and science, a world filled with large words and scientific definitions, a world filled with heavy themes and hard issues. You may want to enjoy the worlds of L'Engle before you allow your children the same pleasure. I assure you even with my complaints the tale is well worth the reading for both children and adults.

Recommended: Yes