A Wrinkle in Time Fun Facts – 15 Things You Didn't Know

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time has never been out of print since 1962, won the Newbery Medal, and remains one of the most frequently banned books in America. The facts behind it are just as strange as the story itself — from the 26 publishers who turned it down, to the NASA astronaut who carried a copy into orbit.

👉 Prefer to listen? We cover all of this (and more!) in our full A Wrinkle in Time podcast episode.

What is A Wrinkle in Time?

A Wrinkle in Time is a 1962 science fantasy novel by American author Madeleine L'Engle. It follows Meg Murry, an awkward teenager, as she travels across the universe with her genius younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe to rescue her missing scientist father from a spreading evil force known as the Black Thing.

It's best known for blending real physics — Einstein's relativity, Planck's quantum theory — with fantasy, and for introducing generations of readers to the concept of a tesseract. Less well known: the woman who wrote it was rejected by at least 26 publishers first.

Madeleine L'Engle: The Woman Behind Meg

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City in 1918. Her mother was a pianist and her father a writer, critic, and foreign correspondent who'd suffered lung damage from mustard gas in World War One — which meant the family moved around often when she was young.

She started writing stories at five and kept a journal by eight. Despite that, some of her teachers reportedly branded her as stupid; she was shy and awkward, and when she couldn't please them, she retreated further into books and her own imagination.

The family's constant moving meant a string of boarding schools, including a stint in Switzerland, before she eventually landed at Smith College. After graduating with an English degree, she worked as both an actress and a playwright while continuing to write. She met her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, while working on a stage production, and they married in 1946. A few years later, the family moved into a 200-year-old farmhouse called Crosswicks in Goshen, Connecticut.

15 A Wrinkle in Time Fun Facts You Didn't Know

1. The idea came to L'Engle on a 10-week road trip

While driving across the American wilderness with her family, the names Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which came to her out of nowhere. She finished the book within a year.

2. It was rejected by at least 26 publishers

Several couldn't agree on whether it was a children's book or a book for adults.

3. Its working title during those rejections was literally the names of the three central characters

"Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which" — not exactly a title built to win over cautious publishers.

4. A Christmas tea party is the reason it got published at all

L'Engle's agent had already given up and returned the manuscript. Then a guest at her mother's Christmas tea party happened to know publisher John Farrar and suggested she meet him. Farrar didn't even have a children's book line at the time — he just read it, liked it, and published it anyway.

5. The publisher who took it on did so partly because of his own faith

Farrar reportedly wanted to publish it because he was "a very religious man and went to church" — the spiritual themes that had scared off every other publisher were exactly what won him over.

6. It won the 1963 Newbery Medal — and L'Engle used her speech to attack conformity

She said the forces working against individuality were trying to make "muffins of us, muffins like every other muffin in the muffin tin."

7. It's one of the most banned books in America

It sits at No. 22 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most challenged books — banned by some evangelical schools for its universalist religious themes, while secular critics separately criticised it for being too religious.

8. Meg Murry is basically Madeleine L'Engle herself

Gangly, awkward, and constantly unhappy with how she looked — L'Engle described her own childhood self in almost identical terms. She once said she was "not an intellectual, I'm instinctual," despite an academic record that was almost all A's and B's (the only subject she failed was German).

9. A teacher once refused to believe she'd written her own prize-winning poem

Young Madeleine entered — and won — a school poetry contest, but her teachers didn't believe a child they'd already decided was "stupid" could have written it. Her mother had to march into the school with a stack of her daughter's other stories and poems to prove it.

10. None of the "invented" planet names are actually invented

Camazotz, the conformist planet where IT lives, is a real Mayan bat god. Ixchel, where Aunt Beast lives, is a Mayan jaguar goddess of medicine. Uriel is a Hebrew archangel, and the star it orbits — Malak — means "angel" in Hebrew.

11. The tesseract concept was many young readers' first brush with real physics

L'Engle drew on Einstein's theory of relativity and Planck's quantum theory, despite never being a strong maths student herself — she picked up a book about Einstein as an adult and became obsessed with cosmology.

12. L'Engle adopted a seven-year-old girl in the middle of writing the book

In the mid-1950s, family friends died and left behind a seven-year-old daughter named Maria. L'Engle and her husband took her in — on top of raising two kids of their own, running a general store, and writing a novel.

13. It has never been out of print since 1962

L'Engle was also inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.

14. A crater on Mercury is named after her

In 2013, a 62-kilometre-wide crater near Mercury's south pole — one that sits in permanent shadow — was named after L'Engle. Mercury craters are specifically reserved for writers, artists, and musicians; J.R.R. Tolkien got one at the same time, at the opposite pole.

15. A NASA astronaut took the book into actual space

Janice Voss read A Wrinkle in Time as a sixth grader in 1966 and credited it with inspiring her to become an astronaut. When L'Engle found out, she sent Voss a signed copy — which Voss carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997, reading it while looking out at the stars.

A Wrinkle in Time Adaptations — Fast Facts

Adaptation	Year	Notes
TV movie	2003	Starred Katie Stuart as Meg and Alfre Woodard as Mrs. Which. It won Best Feature Film at the Toronto Children's Film Festival, but L'Engle herself wasn't a fan — asked by Newsweek if it met her expectations, she said: "I have glimpsed it... I expected it to be bad, and it is."
Feature film	2018	Directed by Ava DuVernay, starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling as the three Mrs., with Storm Reid as Meg. Notable changes from the book include Charles Wallace's backstory and the removal of the character Aunt Beast entirely.

FAQ

What are the best A Wrinkle in Time fun facts?

The most surprising include the 26 publisher rejections, the fact that the "invented" planet names are all pulled from real mythology, and the NASA astronaut who took a signed copy of the book into space.

How many publishers rejected A Wrinkle in Time before it was published?

At least 26 — some couldn't decide whether it was a children's book or a book for adults, and it was finally published thanks to a chance connection made at a Christmas tea party.

Are the planet names in A Wrinkle in Time based on real mythology?

Yes. Camazotz is a Mayan bat god, Ixchel a Mayan jaguar goddess, and Uriel a Hebrew archangel — none of them were invented for the book.

What did Madeleine L'Engle think of the film adaptations?

She was openly unimpressed with the 2003 TV movie, telling Newsweek she expected it to be bad and it was. She died in 2007, over a decade before the 2018 Disney film was released.

Has A Wrinkle in Time ever been out of print?

No — it has remained continuously in print since its original publication in 1962.

Conclusion

A Wrinkle in Time is over 60 years old and still one of the most argued-about books on the children's shelf — banned in some schools, required reading in others, and rejected by 26 publishers before any of that was possible. The facts behind it are stranger than most people realise.

👉 Get the full story — listen to our A Wrinkle in Time podcast episode.