What Classic Children’s Novel ranks as the all-time most Rejected Manuscript by Publishers (At least 26x)?

50 Years Since its Publication, this Children’s Book Remains an all time Classic

(Tomorrow marks the book’s 50th Anniversary!)

1st Hint:  Published in the 1960‘s, February 13, 2012 marks its 50th Anniversary.

2nd Hint: It’s part science fiction/part fantasy/part family story.

3rd Hint: It has a strong spiritual message and is about the battle of good and evil.

4th Hint: It’s not by Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, or J.R.R.Tolkien (their books were published earlier)

5th Hint: It won a 1964 Newberry Award.

6th Hint: The protagonist was a girl.

Give up?  You’ll get it after this hint: “Tesseracts” are based on a real concept.  The book is A Wrinkle in Time, written by Madeleine L’Engle.

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”  -Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle said it was her discovery of particle physics and quantum mechanics that gave her the idea for A Wrinkle in Time and led her to write the book: “I’d always been very bad at arithmetic, but this was beyond arithmetic – this was exciting. In 1942, I started reading Einstein. I picked up a book about him – I don’t quite know why…I thought it was fascinating, and read it for myself…not for school. I found it fascinating that light is a particle and that it is also a straight line.”

I remember as a young girl, being completely drawn into the book and the characters of Meg Murray, her rather strange younger brother, super-genius Charles Wallace, and their new friend, a popular student named Calvin O’Keefe .  Up until then, my heroines had been Nancy Drew and Jo March – this was a new kind of girl!  She was a bit awkward, with braces and glasses, but she knew she had to do whatever she could to help find her missing scientist father.  And she was really good at math. Really good.

In this, my first exposure to fantasy science fiction, I was to meet Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which, three mysterious creatures disguised as humans, who turn out to be angelic beings.  Sometimes harsh angels. L’Engle’s defense: “Well, I suspect that if we do wrong things, angels will be harsh.  They were certainly more loving than harsh.”  And then there was the disembodied brain with no heart, called “IT”, the evil villain who Meg eventually conquers with the powerful emotion of human love.

 Leonar Marcus, author of the new biography about L’Engle, Searching for Madeleine (to be published this fall) says, “Part of what made it [A Wrinkle in Time] so liberating to so many girls is that it allowed those with an analytic mind and an interest in the pursuit of science to read about a subject that at the time was not perceived of as a suitable course of study for girls.  At the same time, at its core it’s about a girl’s love for her father, and that emotional level transcends the genre aspect of the book.”

When Madeleine L’Engle was asked if she thought it was important for books to teach lessons, she replied, “I don’t think my books tell a lesson, but they do tell a story.  We do live in a world where there is darkness and light, and the sooner kids know that, the better.  They need to know that we have a choice, and we do have the option to choose good.”

A Wrinkle in Time embodies all of what L’Engle holds to be important: it isn’t “dumbed down” for young readers, but draws them into the fascinating world of math and science, while at the same time giving weight to the importance of love and the triumph of good over evil.  Excuse me now – I think I need to go and re-read this classic!

Sources:

1 -“‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Its Sci-Fi Heroine”, by Pamela Paul, published 1/27/12, N.Y. Times Sunday Book Review:

2- Madeleine L’Engle Interview Transcript, Scholastic.  You can read the entire transcript here:

Madeleine L’Engle Interview Transcript