50 Fun Facts About A Wrinkle in Time

On the planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, the all-controlling ruler called IT turns out to be what?

A disembodied brain gives off a pulsing rhythm that drags every mind on the planet into step. Meg thinks it the most horrible thing she has ever seen.

What was Mrs Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time before she gave up her life fighting the darkness?

A star is what she once was, until she exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to drive the shadow back. The children learn it just after watching another one die in the same fight.

At the end of A Wrinkle in Time, what does Meg have that IT lacks, letting her free Charles Wallace?

Love is the one weapon IT cannot understand, so Meg tells her brother again and again how much he means to her. IT's biggest mistake was claiming that Mrs Whatsit hated her.

A Wrinkle in Time opens 'It was' and which words, borrowed from an 1830 Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel?

A dark and stormy night is fiction's most mocked cliché, and the author chose it with a wink to the reader. Meg really is sitting awake while a hurricane shakes the house.

Which author saw A Wrinkle in Time rejected by at least 26 publishers before it became a children's classic?

Madeleine L'Engle was told the story was 'too different', and suspected that a girl hero in science fiction had put publishers off. The novel has never been out of print since.

Which Netflix series' final season shows young Holly Wheeler with a copy of A Wrinkle in Time?

Stranger Things uses the novel as a metaphor for the Upside Down, with nods to Camazotz and IT. The villain Vecna even poses as a 'Mr. Whatsit' to lure children away.

Who plays Mrs Which, eldest of the three celestial guides, in Disney's 2018 film of A Wrinkle in Time?

Oprah Winfrey joined the cast first, and Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling followed as Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who. In the novel Mrs Which rarely manages to take solid form at all.

In A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit startles Mrs Murry by saying 'there is such a thing as a' what?

Tesseract names an idea Mrs Murry's husband was working on before he vanished, so hearing it from a visitor in the kitchen shocks her. The word describes a fold in space that makes a vast journey almost instant.

Before leaving Meg on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit hands her which gift?

Her faults, chiefly anger and stubbornness, turn out to be what stops IT swallowing her mind. Calvin is given stronger powers of communication and Charles Wallace the resilience of childhood.

In A Wrinkle in Time, what name does Meg use for the gentle being who nurses her back to health?

Aunt Beast is the name the creature itself settles on after sifting the words in Meg's mind and rejecting 'monster'. Its planet, Ixchel, lies next to Camazotz.

Which leading American children's book prize did A Wrinkle in Time win the year after it was published?

The Newbery Medal goes to the year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature. A 2007 paperback edition even reprints the acceptance speech.

Which planet of towering mountains and singing creatures is the children's first stop in A Wrinkle in Time?

Uriel takes its name from an archangel, and its creatures make music that Mrs Whatsit translates as a hymn of praise. The ladies stop there to rest and to show the children what they are up against.

Which seer, living in a cave in Orion's Belt, shows the children Earth in her crystal ball in A Wrinkle in Time?

The Happy Medium would rather watch pleasant things and has to be coaxed into showing a shadowed Earth. Before dozing off she lets Meg and Calvin glimpse their mothers back home.

What name is given in A Wrinkle in Time to the evil dark cloud that has spread across several worlds?

The Black Thing has swallowed Camazotz whole and partly covers Earth. Mrs Whatsit tells the children that Earth's great artists and thinkers have been fighting it for a long time.

In what is Mr Murry held prisoner when Meg finally reaches him on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time?

A transparent column works like a one-way peephole: the children can see him, but he cannot see out. Meg is first hurled back by the cell's see-through wall as if she had hit brick.

What does Mrs Who lend Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, to be used only as a last resort on Camazotz?

Her glasses let Meg pass straight through the wall of her father's cell. Without them the inside is pitch dark, so she hands them to him and he carries her out.

How does Mrs Who usually speak in A Wrinkle in Time, because she finds it hard to use her own words?

In quotations is how she copes, borrowing great authors and often keeping their own languages. She tells Charles Wallace, after Pascal, that 'the heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing'.

Calvin O'Keefe, a popular boy a few grades above Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, plays which sport for the school?

Basketball lets him pass for one of the crowd, yet he tells Meg that nobody at home, where there are eleven children, would notice if he vanished. He calls himself a 'sport', a biological oddity.

What is the Murry family's dog called in A Wrinkle in Time, a name shared with a character in Hamlet?

Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince who speaks the final lines of Shakespeare's tragedy. The Murrys' dog growls towards the laboratory just before Mrs Whatsit blows in.

Which director of Disney's 2018 A Wrinkle in Time was the first Black woman to helm a $100-million live-action film?

Ava DuVernay had an estimated $103 million to work with and shot in Los Angeles and New Zealand. The finished film lost money at the box office.

What are the names of Meg Murry's sporty twin brothers, who fit in easily at school in A Wrinkle in Time?

Sandy and Dennys keep telling their sister to act more normal, which only makes her more bitter. A later book in the series sends the pair back to the days just before Noah's flood.

Which school principal in A Wrinkle in Time suggests Meg Murry should stop hoping her father will return?

Mr. Jenkins gets a sharp answer: Meg will believe it when her mother says so. In the sequel he turns into an unlikely ally on her next quest.

Mrs Murry, a scientist with a laboratory at home in A Wrinkle in Time, sometimes cooks dinner over what?

A Bunsen burner lets her watch an experiment and the family's supper at the same time. Meg describes her mother as both a scientist and a beauty.

What are the children outside every house on Camazotz doing in perfect rhythm in A Wrinkle in Time?

Bouncing balls and skipping rope to a single beat, every child moves at exactly the same instant. One little boy who fumbles is snatched indoors by his frightened mother.

The turkey dinner Meg and Calvin enjoy on Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time tastes like what to Charles Wallace?

Sand is all he tastes, because the meal is an illusion planted in the mind and his mind is shut tight against it. Soon afterwards he lowers his guard on purpose, hoping to find his father.

Which document does Meg Murry shout at IT in A Wrinkle in Time, before arguing that like and equal are different?

The Declaration of Independence gives her 'all men are created equal', and IT pounces: on Camazotz everyone is equal because everyone is alike. Her furious reply buys her a moment.

What does Mr Murry tell Meg to recite when IT's rhythm starts to pull her under in A Wrinkle in Time?

The periodic table steadies her for a moment, but nothing holds for long against that pull. Her father finally snatches her and Calvin off the planet altogether.

Which figure at CENTRAL Central Intelligence in A Wrinkle in Time speaks straight into the children's minds?

The Man with Red Eyes calls himself the Prime Coordinator, yet he is only a mouthpiece for the power behind him. Charles Wallace hits him hard to test whether he is even real.

Meg Murry struggles at school in A Wrinkle in Time, yet she breezes through Calvin's homework in which subject?

Mathematics comes easily because her father taught her shortcuts, which is exactly what annoys her teachers. She can handle E=mc² but cannot name the capital of New York.

What has Mrs Whatsit stolen in A Wrinkle in Time, a theft the town blames on a passing tramp?

Bedsheets are what she took, and she cheerfully admits she needed them and has used them. Mrs Who is later found stitching them into ghost costumes.

Which word does Calvin O'Keefe use in A Wrinkle in Time for the feeling that sends him to the haunted house?

A compulsion is his name for a feeling he always obeys, and this one brings him to Meg and Charles Wallace. On Camazotz a different kind of feeling warns him that the great building means terrible danger.

On the first planet the children visit in A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit changes into what kind of creature?

A winged, horse-like being with a man's torso and wings like rainbows is how the book pictures her, though Meg decides she is nothing like a Greek centaur. Calvin drops to his knees and she tells him never to do that.

What do the children breathe through as Mrs Whatsit carries them into thin air in A Wrinkle in Time?

Flowers handed up by the planet's creatures give off the oxygen the children need as the atmosphere thins. From the mountaintop they get their first look at the shadow.

Mrs Which stops by mistake on what kind of planet in A Wrinkle in Time, almost killing the children?

Two-dimensional space has no room for lungs, and Meg feels herself crushed flat until they are whisked away again. Mrs Which apologises, with a hint of amusement, having forgotten how solid human children are.

Where do Meg and Charles Wallace tumble back to Earth at the very end of A Wrinkle in Time?

The vegetable garden belongs to the twins, and soon the whole family is hugging in it, dog included. The three ladies begin a goodbye, but they are swept away before they can finish it.

Why must Meg, rather than her father or Calvin, go back for Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time?

She is closest to him: her father has been away for years and Calvin has only just met the boy. When Mrs Whatsit asks whether she has the courage to go alone, she answers no, and goes anyway.

After tumbling over in the Murry kitchen in A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit says she has sprained her what?

Dignity is all that gets hurt when one stubborn boot comes off suddenly and she tips over backwards in her chair, water pouring across the floor. Mrs Murry, who was pulling, sits down with a thump.

Which book of the Bible does Calvin O'Keefe read to Charles Wallace as a bedtime story in A Wrinkle in Time?

Genesis, a story of creation and beginnings, is read on the very night the children's own journey starts. Calvin has only just met the family that afternoon.

Whom does Charles Wallace name first among Earth's fighters against the darkness in A Wrinkle in Time?

Jesus is his answer to a line from the Gospel of John, and the list grows to take in Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Einstein and the Buddha. That mixed company later drew a challenge in an Alabama school district.

Parents at a Florida elementary school challenged A Wrinkle in Time in 1984, claiming the novel promoted what?

Witchcraft was the charge, thanks to three odd old ladies and a crystal ball. The author shrugged that people would damn a book without reading it, and called the fuss great publicity.

Which publisher took A Wrinkle in Time after a guest at the author's Christmas tea party made an introduction?

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as the firm is now known, took the book on after John Farrar met the author and liked the manuscript. It came out under the firm's Ariel imprint.

Which sequel to A Wrinkle in Time sends Meg and Calvin inside one of Charles Wallace's mitochondria?

A Wind in the Door appeared eleven years after the first book and shrinks the cosmic battle to the inside of a single cell. The travellers must cure a deadly disease to win it.

The planet Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time is named after a bat god from which civilisation's mythology?

Maya myth supplies a second name as well: Ixchel, the planet where Meg is healed, shares its name with a goddess of medicine. The author enjoyed hiding such allusions in her place names.

The names Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which first came to the author of A Wrinkle in Time during what?

A camping trip across America in 1959 took the family through deserts and buttes she found wholly new and alien. She said the three names came suddenly into her mind.

Of the 2003 TV film of A Wrinkle in Time, the novel's author said 'I expected it to be bad, and' what?

'It is' was her whole review, given to Newsweek after she had only glimpsed the television version. She died in 2007, years before the big-screen remake.

Which artist, later the author of The Westing Game, designed the first-edition jacket of A Wrinkle in Time?

Ellen Raskin designed more than a thousand book jackets before her own mystery novel made her name. Her blue cover for this one was later replaced with art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Which Shakespeare play does Calvin draw on in A Wrinkle in Time, likening Charles Wallace to a spirit trapped in a pine?

The Tempest gives Calvin his image of a bright spirit shut up inside a cloven pine tree. It almost works, and for a moment the real boy seems about to break free.

What does the possessed Charles Wallace say IT does to anyone on Camazotz who falls ill in A Wrinkle in Time?

Puts them to sleep is his chilling phrase, and when Calvin asks whether that means murder he waves the word away as primitive. That is how Camazotz claims to have conquered illness.

To which strict form of poetry does Mrs Whatsit compare a human life in A Wrinkle in Time?

A sonnet has fixed rules for metre and rhyme, she says, yet the poet is free to write anything at all inside them. That is her answer to whether Meg's future is already settled.

Which cartoonist's 2012 graphic novel of A Wrinkle in Time won an Eisner Award for teen publications?

Hope Larson both wrote and drew the official adaptation, which arrived fifty years after the original novel. It took the Eisner for Best Publication for Teens the following year.