A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet Series #1)

by Madeleine L'Engle

Overview

This newly re-designed edition includes Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal acceptance speech and a new interview with the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312367541
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Series:	Time Quintet Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	131
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007) was the Newbery Medal-winning author of more than 60 books, including the much-loved A Wrinkle in Time. Born in 1918, L’Engle grew up in New York City, Switzerland, South Carolina and Massachusetts.  Her father was a reporter and her mother had studied to be a pianist, and their house was always full of musicians and theater people. L’Engle graduated cum laude from Smith College, then returned to New York to work in the theater. While touring with a play, she wrote her first book, The Small Rain, originally published in 1945. She met her future husband, Hugh Franklin, when they both appeared in The Cherry Orchard.

 

Upon becoming Mrs. Franklin, L’Engle gave up the stage in favor of the typewriter. In the years her three children were growing up, she wrote four more novels. Hugh Franklin temporarily retired from the theater, and the family moved to western Connecticut and for ten years ran a general store. Her book Meet the Austins, an American Library Association Notable Children's Book of 1960, was based on this experience.

 

Her science fantasy classic A Wrinkle in Time was awarded the 1963 Newbery Medal. Two companion novels, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet (a Newbery Honor book), complete what has come to be known as The Time Trilogy, a series that continues to grow in popularity with a new generation of readers. Her 1980 book A Ring of Endless Light won the Newbery Honor. L’Engle passed away in 2007 in Litchfield, Connecticut.

Date of Birth:

November 2, 1918

Date of Death:

September 6, 2007

Place of Birth:

New York, NY

Place of Death:

Litchfield, CT

Education:

Smith College, 1941

Read an Excerpt

"Now, don't be frightened, loves," Mrs. Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description. Outwardly Mrs. Whatsit was surely no longer a Mrs. Whatsit. She was a marble-white body with powerful flanks, something like a horse but at the same time completely unlike a horse, for from the magnificently modeled back sprang a nobly formed torso, arms, and a head resembling a man's, but a man with a perfection of dignity and virtue, an exaltation of joy such as Meg had never before seen. No, she thought, it's not like a Greek centaur. Not in the least.

From the shoulders slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry.

Calvin fell to his knees.

"No," Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs. Whatsit's voice. "Not to me, Calvin. Never to me. Stand up."

"Ccarrry themm," Mrs. Which commanded.

With a gesture both delicate and strong Mrs. Whatsit knelt in front of the children, stretching her wings wide and holding them steady, but quivering. "Onto my back, now," the new voice said.

The children took hesitant steps toward the beautiful creature.

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, L'Engle's work of fantasy and science fiction combined with some Christian theology has now been read by several generations of young enthusiasts. The author went on to write three others, forming a quartet based on the Murry family, and including themes like the power of love and the need to make responsible moral choices. In this story, Meg Murry, her extraordinary little brother Charles Wallace, and schoolmate Calvin O'Keefe make the acquaintance of eccentric Mrs. Whatsit and friends (who turn out to be extraterrestrial beings). Together they journey through a wrinkle in time, a tesseract, to rescue the Murrys' missing father from an evil presence (likened by some interpreters to a black hole), and a sinister brain called IT. Although this is fantasy, the characters are portrayed realistically and sympathetically; it is Meg's ability to love that enables them to return safely to Earth and make secure the right to individuality. L'Engle herself claims that she does not know how she came to write the story; "I had no choice," she says, "It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant." A plus with this new edition is an essay by Lisa Sonne that explores scientific concepts related to the story—multiple dimensions, dark energy, and string theory. Each of these concepts were conceived since the book's 1962 publication but are amazingly applicable to A Wrinkle in Time, and help to ensure that this imaginative book will be read for a long time into the future. 2005 (orig. 1962), Laurel Leaf/Random House, Ages 9 up.
—Barbara L. Talcroft

Children's Literature

“A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart. Meg Murry was my hero growing up. I wanted glasses and braces and my parents to stick me in an attic bedroom. And I so wanted to save Charles Wallace from IT.” —Meg Cabot

“A book that every young person should read, a book that provides a road map for seeking knowledge and compassion even at the worst of times, a book to make the world a better place.” —Cory Doctorow

“An exhilarating experience.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This imaginative book will be read for a long time into the future.” —Children's Literature

From the Publisher