“Yes, but— the end can’t happen before the middle!”
-Miranda Sinclair
1919
Madeleine L’Engle, creator of Meg Murry, is born in Manhattan.
1922
The American Library Association polls children’s librarians across the country to determine the best book for children released in the past year. They award the first John Newbery medal to a nonfiction history book titled The Story Of Mankind.
1945
Madeleine L’Engle publishes her first book, the semi-autobiographical novel The Small Rain, at age twenty-six. She had been working on it throughout her college years and got it published while working as a stage actress in New York. Over the next thirteen years, she will publish four more books, none of which will be particularly successful.
c. 1950
Meg Murry is born. She is not a real person, but will become the protagonist of a widely celebrated science fiction novel for children.
1958
L'Engle turns forty and decides to give up writing, being unable to generate any real income for her family and tired of receiving rejection letters.
1959
Before moving back to Manhattan from a farm in Connecticut, L'Engle goes on a camping trip with her family in the western United States. While exploring the natural wonders of the region, she gets an idea for a story and begins writing again.
c. 1960
Dr. Alexander Murry, Meg’s father, is chosen for a scientific mission by the United States Department of Defense; as part of a broader research project into tesseracts and their impact on space-time, he attempts to travel via tesser to Mars, but instead spins out of the solar system, lands on the alien planet Camazotz, and is unreachable for several years.
1960
L'Engle publishes her novel Meet The Austins, which is a modest success that encourages her to begin drafting a new novel. She picks up the idea she developed while out camping and completes the manuscript for A Wrinkle In Time, which will be reviewed and rejected by over thirty publishers in the next two years.
c. 1962
Meg Murry and her family are visited by three mysterious beings - later revealed to be angels - named Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. The three visitors take Meg and her younger brother, Charles Wallace, on an interstellar journey via tesser to rescue their father from Camazotz. Meg and Charles Wallace are returned to their home - specifically, the broccoli patch of their garden - seemingly five minutes before they left, owing to the time-bending nature of the tesseract.
1962
A Wrinkle In Time is finally published, and will remain in print for at least sixty years afterwards. L'Engle will write seven additional novels set in the same universe, the book will be adapted for the screen twice, and L’Engle’s position as one of the most celebrated children’s authors and science fiction authors of the twentieth century will be cemented forever.
1963
A Wrinkle In Time receives the forty-second Newbery medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
1964
The game show Jeopardy! debuts on NBC, hosted by Art Fleming.
1966
Miranda Sinclair is born. She is not a real person, but will become the protagonist of a widely celebrated science fiction novel for children.
1968
Rebecca Stead, creator of Miranda Sinclair, is born in Manhattan.
1972
Madeleine L'Engle publishes A Circle Of Quiet, a memoir in which she recounts, among other things, how she came to write A Wrinkle In Time. She recalls a camping trip she took with her family in which "we drove through a world of deserts and buttes and leafless mountains, wholly new and alien to me. And suddenly into my mind came the names, Mrs Whatsit. Mrs Who. Mrs Which."
1973
The game show The $10,000 Pyramid debuts on television, hosted by Dick Clark and renamed The $20,000 Pyramid a few years later.
1978
Miranda Sinclair attends middle school on Manhattan's upper west side. Her favorite book is A Wrinkle In Time, which she rereads again and again. At one point, she gets into an argument with her classmate Marcus about the nature of time travel:
“Time travel. Some people think it’s possible. Except those ladies lied, at the beginning of the book.” “What?” “Those ladies in the book—Mrs. What, Mrs. Where, and Mrs. Who.” “Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which,” I corrected him. He shrugged. “What do you mean, they lied? They never lied.” I was getting annoyed. The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my book. It’s like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed. “Don’t you remember?” He leaned forward in his chair. “They’re traveling through time, right? All over the universe, right? And they promise that girl that they’ll have her back home five minutes before she left. But they don’t.” “How do you know they don’t get her home five minutes before she left? I mean, there’s no clock or anything. They leave at night and they get back the same night. Maybe they left at eight-thirty and got home at eight-twenty-five.” He laughed. “You don’t need a clock. Think. At the beginning of the book, that girl walks through the vegetable garden—” “Meg.” “Huh?” “You keep saying ‘that girl.’ Her name is Meg.” “—so she walks to the far side of the vegetable garden and sits on this stone wall, right? So, she can see the garden from where she’s sitting and talking with that boy right? And then those ladies show up and take them away.” “His name is Calvin. And so what if they can see the garden?” “So the garden is where they appear when they get back home at the end of the book. Remember? They land in the broccoli. So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they left.” I put my book down and shook my head. “Think about it. They hadn’t even left yet. How could they have gotten back already? They didn’t even know for sure whether they would get back.” “It doesn’t matter whether they knew it. That’s got nothing to do with it.” He leaned back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “If they land in the broccoli at eight-twenty-five, they should be in the broccoli at eight-twenty-five. Period.” “That makes no sense,” I said. “What if they couldn’t do it—save Meg’s father and get back in one piece?” “Then they wouldn’t have landed in the broccoli at all. But they did do it, right?” “Yes, but—the end can’t happen before the middle!” He smiled. “Why can’t it?”
Miranda also receives an inscribed first edition of Wrinkle as a Christmas gift from her mother's boyfriend, with a note from Madeleine L'Engle telling her to "tesser well". This unsettles Miranda, as she's been receiving a series of mysterious notes predicting things that are going to happen to her, including receiving this book from a gift. She's not sure where the letters are coming from or what to make of them.
1979
Miranda's mother appears on The $20,000 Pyramid and wins one of the Winners Circle rounds, with the total prize money around $12,000. Miranda and her best friend are almost struck by a city bus, but at the last second an unhoused elderly man shoves them out of the way, saving their lives but sacrificing his own. Miranda receives one last mysterious note urging her to write down the story of what happened to her and hand-deliver it to the author of the notes. It isn't until near the end of the novel that she realizes who that is.
c. 1980
Rebecca Stead attends a book signing by Madeleine L'Engle at Books & Co. on Manhattan's Upper East Side. L'Engle inscribes Stead's copy of A Wrinkle In Time with "Rebecca, tesser well." Also around this time, Stead's mother appears as a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid but does not win.
1980
Madeleine L’Engle publishes A Ring Of Endless Light, which would become a finalist for the Newbery medal the following year, making it and Wrinkle L’Engle’s only books to be recognized by the Newbery committee. Ring is set in the same universe as Meet The Austins.
1984
A new version of Jeopardy! debuts in syndication, hosted by Alex Trebek.
1987
Tony Ginocchio is born in Park Ridge, Illinois. He will not write any beloved science fiction novels but has plenty to say about the ones other people have written.
1990
The first stage adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time premieres in Chicago.
1998
Nina Ginocchio, a public librarian in Park Ridge, Illinois, recommends one of her favorite childhood novels, A Wrinkle In Time, to her son Tony, who has recently decided to read every Newbery medalist for some reason.
2003
Tony Ginocchio writes a term paper for his high school American Literature class on Madeleine L’Engle, although he decides to avoid writing about her most famous novel out of fear of not having anything original to say. Instead, he picks another book he’s never read before called A Ring Of Endless Light.
2004
The first film adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time premieres on the Disney Channel to mixed reviews.
2007
The New York Times runs a story about a man in Denver suffering from severe amnesia.
Rebecca Stead publishes her first children's novel, First Light, and its success allows her to leave her career as a public defender and pursue writing full-time. Madeleine L'Engle dies at age 89; as you'd expect, all of her obituaries lead with the fact that she wrote A Wrinkle In Time.
2009
Tony Ginocchio writes a paper for his senior year theology class, Religion and Autobiography, on Madeleine L’Engle, focusing on her nonfiction book A Circle Of Quiet, which describes, among other things, how L'Engle came to write A Wrinkle In Time. Rebecca Stead, in an interview with School Library Journal, discusses her encounter with Madeleine L'Engle at a book signing decades ago, as well as the inspiration for her new novel:
"The idea came from an article in the New York Times about a guy who was walking around in Denver. He walked up to a policeman and said he couldn’t remember who he was or why he was in Denver. He didn’t even know if he had any connections there. So they tried lots of things to help him remember. Under hypnosis, he said he was married to a woman named Penny and they had two young daughters who were killed in a car accident. Eventually, they circulated photos of him, and he was claimed by Penny. But she wasn’t his wife—she was his fiancée. And they had no children. What a strange story. Maybe because I read a lot of speculative fiction as a kid, I immediately thought, maybe this guy knows something that we don’t. Or maybe this guy came from some time or place where this had actually come to pass. Maybe that’s why he’s here. What was the journey? And why did he end up with his brain kind of wiped clean? That was the nugget of the story."
Meanwhile, Nina Ginocchio appears on Jeopardy! and wins roughly $57,000 over four games. Later that year, she calls her son Tony and tells him about a novel she just read that she’s pretty sure has a shot at winning the next Newbery medal.
2010
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead wins the eighty-ninth Newbery medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. In the acknowledgements to her novel, Stead writes:
"Every writer stands on the shoulders of many other writers, and it isn’t practical to thank all of them. However, I would like to express my special admiration for the astonishing imagination and hard work of Madeleine L’Engle, whose books captivated me when I was young (they still do), and made me want in on the secrets of the universe (ditto)."
Hope Larson publishes a graphic novel adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time.
2012
School Library Journal polls their readers to determine, once and for all, a ranking of the 100 greatest children's novels of all time, focusing on books for readers ages 9-12. The number two greatest children's novel of all time is a Newbery medalist titled A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L’Engle. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, the only Newbery medalist written as an homage to another Newbery medalist, is voted the eleventh-greatest children’s novel of all time.
2018
Disney releases another film adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time, this time a higher-profile movie with a theatrical release and Ava DuVernay as director. Tony Ginocchio and his wife watch it on streaming and are underwhelmed, concluding that the book is just too difficult for anyone to adapt. It happens to be the last thing they watch before they go to the hospital and welcome their first daughter to the world.
2020
In an early episode of Ted Lasso, Ted makes one of his star players read A Wrinkle In Time as homework for playing professional soccer. Alex Trebek passes away and the search for a replacement host of Jeopardy! goes off without any issues.
2021
Tony Ginocchio, looking for something to read to his toddler daughter at bedtime that she’ll be engaged with, shares Hope Larson’s graphic novel adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time with her. He figures they can read the prose version when she’s a little older.
2022
Tony Ginocchio, after reading a few Newbery medalists to his newborn daughter to get her to sleep, decides to revisit his old project of reading every medalist for some reason.
c. 2023
Marcus invents time travel and, after multiple failed attempts, is able to return to 1979 and save Miranda Sinclair and her best friend from a bus accident.
Things get more complicated from here.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 1963 medalist, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle.