Detective Abby: Oh, hi, story sleuths. I know I should be working on a case for the  R. E. A. D. Agency, but I got a little carried away… I’m trying to pick a theme for my birthday party. Like, should I do “under the sea”? “Soccer”? “Wild animals?” Or “Pretty pretty princess”?

I want to try them all. But an “underwater soccer princess safari”  party theme might be a bit tough to pull off. Even if it does sound kinda cool.

Actually, this has me thinking about my next case… how can we find the theme of a story? Hi, I’m Detective Abby, and this is Crash Course Kids Literature!

[0:34] [THEME MUSIC]

[0:39] Detective Abby: A theme is a central idea that shows  up again and again throughout a story. It helps connect the story’s different parts. Like how all the parts of a party—the decorations, the food, the party favors— come together to show off its theme. You can even sometimes find the same theme in different books.

Kinda like how you could have a soccer-themed birthday party but you can also have a soccer-themed bedroom. My bedroom? It’s 18th-century clothing-themed.

What? I’m not allowed to have a niche interest? Anyway, a theme could be a word, like “family” or “courage,” or a phrase like “home  is where the people you love are.

And it’s different from a story’s plot, or events. The theme offers a bigger meaning for those events — one that you can apply to your own life. Like, although we all have different families and different experiences of being courageous, we all have some connection to those ideas.

They’re relatable! Let’s see what we can find in Madeleine L’Engle’s book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” But first, it’s time to check out our case file. 13-year-old Meg Murry lives with  her mom and three brothers. She’s struggling at school, and she sometimes  has angry outbursts that make her feel ashamed.

Her physicist dad, Mr. Murry, is missing, and she really wishes he’d come home. Things really kick off when Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin meet  three strange neighbors.

One of them, Mrs. Whatsit, explains  that a mysterious force called the Dark Thing has trapped Mr. Murry on another planet.

The characters travel there to rescue him by tessering—a form of time traveling. When the kids get to the  planet where Mr. Murry is, called Camazotz, a being called IT  takes over Charles Wallace’s mind.

While Meg is able to release her dad from IT’s grasp, she now has to un-hypnotize her brother. In the end, Meg saves Charles Wallace from the  darkness of IT by telling him that she loves him. Finally, Mrs.

Whatsit brings everyone back  to Earth, where they’re safe and reunited. Now that we know what happens in  this story, we can get to its themes. Let’s start by looking for ideas or  feelings that show up again and again.

Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin often feel like the odd one out. That can be a not-very-fun feeling. Everyone wants to belong… and have people show up to their birthday party.

But it’s exactly what makes the kids  unique that helps them save Mr. Murry. Like, Meg sometimes has problems with anger.

But her anger also lets her be brave. She says, “When I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.” Ha! We found a theme!

Being true to yourself. We all have times when we have to make the tough choice between being ourselves  and blending in with the crowd. We can find more evidence of this  theme on the planet Camazotz.

There, everything is the same— no underwater soccer princess safari parties allowed. When Charles Wallace gets taken over by IT, he loses all sense of what makes him unique. We read, “The voice was Charles Wallace’s voice, and yet it was different, too, somehow flattened out.” Meg shrieks, “That isn’t Charles!

Charles is gone!” This sets up the epic battle between Meg and the Dark Thing—which may hide more themes beneath it. Meg is our hero. She’s not perfect, but overall, she’s kind and good.

On the other hand, the Dark Thing is always bad, always trying to harm others. So… a kind hero on one hand facing off with an evil villain on the other… Yeah, we’ve found another theme here: goodness triumphs over evil! This theme sneaks up in tons of movies—and books, too!

But I can sense another theme lurking in this story…Remember in our case file, I said that Meg un-hypnotizes Charles  Wallace by telling him she loves him? “Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.” In that scene, we see that love is the ultimate force for good,   and if it’s big enough, it can travel through time. Looks like we’ve unearthed  another theme here: love!

The cool thing about themes is that they’re  universal—anyone anywhere can relate to them. We can use them as a secret link between wildly different stories and characters—and even ourselves! They’re important messages that we can be reminded of any time we pick up a book—on  this planet, or one far, far away.

Thanks for helping me solve this case for the R. E. A. D. Agency. I gotta go send out my invitations to my underwater soccer princess safari party now.

I’ll see you all next time! Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, which was filmed at the Complexly studio in Indianapolis, Indiana and was made with the help of all these lovely people.