It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother, Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."

A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg's father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.

Madeleine L'Engle is a newcomer to the Ariel list, but not to the children's book field. And Both Were Young was listed by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year, and Meet the Austins appears on the American Library Association list of Notable Children's Books of 1960. Miss L'Engle, her husband, Hugh Franklin, and their three children live in New York City.

From the dust jacket