This book influenced me to become a scientist. It takes a heck of a lot more skill to write a really good "kid's book" than a best selling adult novel. Madeleine L'Engle once said that when she had something really important to say she put it in a children's book. Not only did this book influence my career choice but I would like to say it reinforced my character. If you only choose the right way when its easy what's the point?

When Madeleine L'Engle creates a character they seldom appear in only one book, or even just one series for that matter. In The Arm of the Starfish a few of L'Engle's beloved characters from her Newberry Award winning book, A Wrinkle in Time, appear older, wiser and as parents.Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe met in Wrinkle, but by Starfish have married, had six children and live on the island of Gaea off of western Europe. Calvin - now called Dr. O'Keefe - is a successful marine biologist whose dis...

I just love Madeleine L'Engle books. I love the families she gives most (main) characters-- strong, unique, loving, intellectual, spiritual families. I've only read her YA and JF books, but the themes aren't childish-- they deal with death, hard choices, and good and evil-- but she doesn't leave you feeling like the world is a horrible place to live. I would say that if there is any set of "book families" that I would want to model my parenting after, it would probably be the ones found in Madel...

It's astonishing that this book was written by the same author as A Wrinkle in Time. Terrible dialogue, boring characters, convoluted plot, and overwrought puppy love so contrived I almost began to rethink my whole Twilight-is-the-worst-love-story-ever position.

Published only four years after my beloved A Wrinkle in Time (though jumping the characters a generation ahead), this young-adult novel is not of other galaxies but grounded in this world. It’s a mystery thriller with a touch of science fiction (biological regeneration); ethical issues are raised but not heavy-handedly. I marveled at all poor 17-year-old Adam was put through—an adult wouldn’t have been asked to do more. I thought I’d read this book before as I had a memory of a couple of things,...

The tone of this book is unusual. It's got a little of that urban otherness that The Young Unicorns has, but that quality is executed better here. Adam might be suddenly in over his head, but it's mostly believable. He's great. And Joshua is EVERYTHING.That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.That line jumps out and hits you - along with that ending - just the way the last paragraph in the Frost poem hits Joshua.My love for this b...

joey carr's mother was a librarian at one of the local high schools, and she found out i was a huge fan of l'engle. she recommended this to me, telling me that she had actually written books for adults and teenagers, outside of the wrinkle universe. (or as l'engle herself divides them, chronos (austins) and kairos (murrays), with characters intersecting both worlds - canon talis, zachary, and adam.) anyway, i saved this book for a particularly rotten day, thinking that i needed a good comforting...

This packs an unexpected punch. I had written this book off as belonging to the "not-so-great" category that some of L'Engle's lesser-known books for teens sadly fall into, but despite the difficulty I had getting into the story initially, in the end it surprised me. After spending weeks dipping into it, then being distracted by other, shinier books, I consumed the last third in a single day, and even found myself tearing up at the soliloquy on love and loss. Even when not at her best, Madeleine...

Adam Edington faces difficult moral choices when he begins an internship with ground-breaking marine biologist Dr. O'Keefe.According to my friends at Wikipedia, this is the first of the second-generation "Kairos" framework of the author's novels. The story is self-contained, but eagle-eyed readers will recognize Poly's father and mother from previous stories, although they serve to support Adam's story here.Going to fulfill half of Seasonal Reading Challenge Task 30.8, item 2, (letters from "…oF...

I read The Arm of the Starfish as a child 50 years ago; therefore, when I gave up on Madeleine L’Engle’s sequels to A Wrinkle in Time, I thought I’d re-read this book so as to give her another chance.Although some of the characters from that other series pop up (a grown-up Meg Murry and Calvin O’Keefe), readers who begin with The Arm of the Starfish will do just fine without having read A Wrinkle in Time or its inferior sequels. The Arm of the Starfish differs considerably from L’Engle’s best-kn...

2 Stars from me usually means it's a "Meh" book. This was NOT a meh book, this was TORTURE.I absolutely loved about 25% and absolutely hated about 50%. The biggest offender: the sexism and culture of the time was so ingrained into the author's worldview that it was inescapable. I know, I know, this happens when reading classics. Sometimes it's easier to process than others.~STUFF I LOVED~The interesting science behind how starfish, frogs, lizards can generate lim's at sites that have enhanced ne...

I have been following the books of Madeleine L'Engle all through My Big Fat Reading Project. This one is a great tale. Set in the "near future" as of 1965, filed at my library as "children's literature" because as of 1965 there was no such genre as Young Adult. However, Adam is a 17-year-old heading off for a summer job in Portugal before his freshman year at Harvard. He intends to become a marine biologist himself. Dr O'Keefe, his prospective employer, is doing groundbreaking research on the re...

I love A Wrinkle in Time more than almost any other childhood book and was shocked at how much I didn’t enjoy this. It has a convoluted plot, strikingly normative gender roles, and a strangely close relationship between a twelve and a sixteen(?) year old that made me uncomfortable. I felt like I didn’t know the characters, which is weird because several of them are favorites from A Wrinkle in Time. They felt like the color they had in that book was totally washed out by their adulthood here. I w...

First of all, ADAM EDDINGTON OMG. I LOVE Adam. He is easily in the top five characters in all of L'Engle's books. He's also the anti-Zachary Gray; his appearance in a book is an automatic plus a million, while Zachary is an automatic minus a million. (Commander Rodney should have let him drown in Ring. And since he didn't, Poly should have let him drown in Lotus. Third time the charm?*)Anyway, Starfish is a lot of fun. Adam spends a bit too much time trying to make up his mind about whose side t...

We read every book through the lens of the time we're in -- the time in our lives, the atmosphere of the places we live in and love. Madeleine L'Engle wrote The Arm of the Starfish in the 1960s, and Adam Eddington's struggle to disentangle right from wrong, truth from lies, remains pointedly, excruciatingly relevant to the current moment -- maybe to every historical moment. "You cannot be uncommitted, Adam, believe me, you cannot," Joshua advises early on, when what Adam wants most is to be left...

What a strange book! The plot, though convoluted and generic, was fun enough to keep me entertained, but not much else. The characters were complete empty vessels and the vague, borderline sexualisation of a 12-year old by a sixteen year-old was not a good look. Maybe if I'd read this as a kid I would have been more into it. But at least it had the good result of making me want to visit Lisbon?

Excellent book. It was slow to get started in the beginning, but the interesting story, characters, and intrigue reeled me in. I love Madeline Le'Engle's work. I know that she writes a lot of it for children, but I think that adults would do well to read her also.

Adam Eddington is going to work with Dr. O'Keefe (Calvin from Wrinkle in time who is a world-renowned marine biologist) this summer on the island of Gaea. Before even boarding his plane, he is sidetracked by a very attractive young woman, Kali Cutter, who is familiar with Dr. O'Keefe and his work and warns him against them, saying they are unpatriotic and devious and that her father is working to make it right. This immediately colors Adam's opinion of the O'Keefes and drops him into a world of

ENGLISH: This is the first book in the Kairos-second-generation series, what Goodreads calls the O'Keefe family series, https://www.goodreads.com/series/4258.... In fact, this book was published after the first book in the Kairos-first generation series (called by Goodreads the Time-Quintet series, https://www.goodreads.com/series/4940...), but long before the second book in this series.This is the first book where Adam Eddington appears as a character, several years before his second appearance...

Intrigue! Espionage! Double agents! I was rather surprised by the rapid appearance of these elements. There are still enough of the usual L'Engle traits recognizable in the O'Keefe family and their actions and beliefs but this book introduces elements of science, politics, morality, and mortality in a way that is different from the author's two other series.