A Wrinkle in Time
core novel 1962 Time Quintet
Record
| First published | 1962 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.97 (1,310,354 ratings, collected 2026-09-05) |
| Page count | 211 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780312367558 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
A Wrinkle in Time is a 1962 young adult science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle, winner of the Newbery Medal and the first book of the Time Quintet. Thirteen-year-old Meg Murry is struggling at school and at home when she and her unusually gifted young brother Charles Wallace encounter a strange new neighbor, Mrs Whatsit, who mentions a "tesseract," a concept tied to the scientific research their father was pursuing before he vanished without explanation. The next day, Meg, Charles Wallace, and their classmate Calvin O'Keefe visit Mrs Whatsit's home and meet her two companions, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, who reveal themselves to be powerful, ancient beings capable of folding the fabric of space and time to travel vast distances instantly.
Where it sits
- Universe: Time Quintet
- Series: Time Quintet core; position 1 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Awards (verified)
- Newbery Medal, 1963: won
Notes
- From the series record (Time Quintet): The five-book Time Quintet: A Wrinkle in Time and its direct sequels, following the Murry and O'Keefe children across cosmic/time travel adventures. This project treats the whole quintet as Core Canon; L'Engle's separately-continuitied O'Keefe family novels (e.g. The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters), which share some characters but are spy/thriller fiction rather than fantasy, are out of scope and not catalogued here.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Time Quintet: position 1 of 5: next A Wind in the Door (1973)
Sources
← Time Quintet dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.