A Wind in the Door

I noticed in my re-read of A Wrinkle in Time just how fast everything happened. This is the case again in A Wind in the Door, although it didn't stand out to me as much, perhaps because I have a history with the characters from Wrinkle. This time, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace are not just meeting fantastical beings and moving through space, but they are exploring size and relativity through (real) mitochondria and (fictional) farandolae. (Note: I had to google whether farandolae are real, and in doing so, I came across farandole, which is a kind of French dance in which the dancers form a chain. The farandolae in the book dance in a circle together, and this can't be a coincidence.) I love the way Madeleine L'Engle explores huge ideas through interpersonal relationships: the idea that a human being is like a galaxy to a farandola, but that what happens to that farandola affects its human host, and so by implication, what happens to one human matters to the entire galaxy.