Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) was born in New York City and attended Smith College. She wrote more than 60 books, the most famous of which is A Wrinkle In Time (1962), winner of the Newbery Award in 1963. L'Engle continued the story of the Murry family from A Wrinkle In Time with seven other novels (five of which are available as A Wrinkle In Time Quintent from Square Fish). She also wrote the famous series featuring the Austin family, beginning with the novel Meet The Austins (1960). L'Engle revisited the Austins four more times over the next three decades, concluding with Troubling a Star in 1994. The story of the Austins had some autobiographical elements, mirroring Madeleine's life and the life of her family. Madeleine L'Engle's last book, The Joys of Love, is a romantic, coming-of-age story she wrote back in the 1940s, and is being published by FSG.

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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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