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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Wrinkle in Time

Square Fish

Chapter One

"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.



    


From the Paperback edition.

Excerpted from A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle Copyright © 2007 by Madeleine L'Engle. Excerpted by permission.
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