YMMV / Madeleine L'Engle

• Captain Obvious Reveal: At the climax of The Arm Of The Starfish, Kali betrays Adam and causes Joshua's death, revealing she was always on her father's side. What else would you expect from someone named after the Hindu goddess of destruction?
• Harsher in Hindsight; In A Ring of Endless Light the clubbing of a 1000 porpoises by a Japanese fishing village is mentioned early on. Suzy and Vicky imply that porpoises and bottlenose dolphins are superior to humans because they don't murder. It was recently discovered that bottlenose dolphins are the only other species that kills for fun, and one of their favorite targets are porpoises.
• No Yay: Some of the pairings involving Polly.
  • In The Arm Of The Starfish, although fortunately nothing happens, there is some Ship Tease between sixteen-year-old Adam and twelve-year-old Polly.
  • In Dragons In The Water, Polly shares a kiss with Geraldo. While their age difference (Polly is fourteen and Geraldo is seventeen) may not seem like much, keep in mind that Polly is still very much a Kiddie Kid, who, for instance, still plays make-believe games; while Geraldo is portrayed as very much an adult — living on his own and having a career with adult responsibilities.
  • In A House Like A Lotus, Renny, a medical student in his mid twenties, has a one-night stand with sixteen-year-old Polly, who is recovering from a trauma (including two unwanted sexual advances in a matter of hours) and is under Renny's care.
• Sequel Displacement: A Ring of Endless Light is probably the most well-known book from the Chronos series, despite being the fourth out of five books and several short stories.
• Values Dissonance:
  • L’Engle’s approval of Corporal Punishment and the Tough Love approach to Maggy’s situation, as shown in Meet The Austins, doesn’t sit well with many modern readers, who find it especially jarring when juxtaposed with the progressive views the author otherwise displays.
  • The pairing of Vicky and Polly with older teens and even young adult men. At the time of the writing, being able to gain the attention of an attractive older teen or young adult of one’s preferred gender was a measure of one’s desirability, and L’Engle used these pairings effectively to show her protagonists to be very desirable girls. Nowadays, the focus would be on the older teens/young adult men, who would be regarded as predators for pursuing girls as young as Vicky and Polly.