Book Review: Many Waters
Rated by 1 member
What Parents Should Know
Though the plotting is slow in the book's first half, the
tension picks up considerably after that. The biblical
characters begin to seem real, and their dilemmas are
involving. Based on the story of Noah and the ark; descriptions
of the fantastic creatures and the desert setting are
evocative.
Common Sense Media Review
The main characters, Sandy and Dennys, spend a good part of
this book just recovering from sunburn, being tended by members
of Noah's family. The biblical characters--both the tiny,
long-lived humans and the angels--are considerably more
interesting than the twins. Even the animal characters, like
the miniature mammoth, Higgaion, have more personality.
When Sandy and Dennys do speak, they tend to state the perfectly obvious. One twelve-year-old reader was frustrated by the lack of connection to the main characters, but another preteen enjoyed the biblical references and liked the idea that "normal kids were fooling around and could suddenly appear someplace totally different."
Eventually, readers are pulled into the struggle between angels and fallen angels, the ageless battle between good and evil that is at the heart of all the Chronos Quartet stories.
Since the novel was written out of chronological order in the Time Quartet, there isn't much doubt about whether Sandy and Dennys will return to their own time; the twins are alive and well years later in the third book of the series. Rather, L'Engle raises the interesting questions of what part the twins will play in the battle, and what will happen to Yalith, whom they both love. This is not conventional storytelling, but it has its own rewards.
L'Engle's Newbery winner, and the first book in the Time Quartet, is A Wrinkle in Time. For another story with a biblical setting, try Elizabeth George Speare's Newbery award-winning The Bronze Bow.
From the Book:
Sandy had been convinced that he and Dennys had blown themselves somewhere far from home. ... If this Noah was [from] the story of Noah and the flood, they were still on their own planet. They had blown themselves in time, rather than in space. And to get home from time might be far more difficult.
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