Madeleine L'Engle was a prolific writer, but is best known for her Time quintet of books: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters and An Acceptable Time. The quartet follows the adventures of the Murry and O'Keeffe families from travel through cosmic tesseracts to microscopic adventures with cellular mitochondria, and gives readers a glimpse of both L'Engle's spiritual side and her passion for science. The quintet is also known as the Kairos series and it shares several characters and event crossovers with her Chronos series which follows the Austin family.

A Wrinkle in Time won the Newberry award in 1963, and a transcription of L'Engle's acceptance speech can be found on her official website.

Mrs. L'Engle passed away in 2007.