Books like A Wrinkle in Time
What should you read after Madeleine L'Engle’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Madeleine L'Engle
- 1962
- Children's science fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after A Wrinkle in Time
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchBridge to Terabithia
Katherine Paterson
Paterson writes the same kind of child L'Engle did: prickly, unpopular, smarter than the adults allow, and saved less by magic than by one person deciding to see her clearly.
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Love as the actual weapon
- A father worth rescuing
- No science fiction at all
Best for the planet run by one mindThe Giver
Lois Lowry
Camazotz with the volume turned down and the lights left on: a whole community keeping perfect time because someone decided sameness was kinder than choice.
- A brain that runs a planet
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Faith and physics side by side
- No cosmic travel, no Mrs W's
Great matchCoraline
Neil Gaiman
Another child walking into a wrong version of home and having to out-stubborn it. Gaiman gives you IT's seduction in miniature, with buttons where the eyes should be.
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- A brain that runs a planet
- A father worth rescuing
- Genuinely frightening in places
Worth a look — with a warningHis Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
Pullman takes L'Engle's parallel worlds and her theology and argues the opposite case, which is exactly why the two books sit so well together on one shelf.
- Faith and physics side by side
- Travel by tesseract
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Pointedly anti-religious where L'Engle is devout
Best for the joy of ideasThe Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster
The same conviction that abstractions are places you can visit — except Juster's are made of arithmetic and puns, and nobody is ever in real danger.
- Travel by tesseract
- Three strange old women
- Faith and physics side by side
- Comic throughout, no menace
Great matchThe Chronicles of Narnia
C. S. Lewis
L'Engle admired Lewis and it shows: children crossing into another world, an unmistakable good and evil, and Christian argument carried lightly enough that you can take it or leave it.
- Faith and physics side by side
- Travel by tesseract
- Three strange old women
- Seven books of varying quality
Great matchFahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
If the part that stuck was Camazotz — everyone bouncing balls in unison — Bradbury gives you the adult version, a country that gave up thinking because thinking made it unhappy.
- A brain that runs a planet
- Love as the actual weapon
- Adult protagonist, adult stakes
Great matchThe Golden Compass
The entry point to Pullman's trilogy on its own terms: a girl who lies brilliantly, an instrument that answers questions, and adults whose plans for children are unforgivable.
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- A father worth rescuing
- Travel by tesseract
- Ends on an unresolved note
Best for the gifted, isolated childEnder's Game
Orson Scott Card
Charles Wallace's problem, taken seriously and taken far: a child whose intelligence makes him useful to adults, and what that use costs him.
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Love as the actual weapon
- Faith and physics side by side
- Bleak about adults throughout
Great matchHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
J.K. Rowling
The comfort read in the neighbourhood: an overlooked child discovers the world is bigger than the one that dismissed him, and that his parents' love left something behind.
- Love as the actual weapon
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Three strange old women
- Far lighter in tone
Best for a difficult girl softeningThe Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mary Lennox is as unlikeable as Meg on page one and gets there by an entirely different route: no tesseract, just a locked door, some seeds and a great deal of stubbornness.
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- A father worth rescuing
- Love as the actual weapon
- No fantasy element whatsoever
Great matchPercy Jackson & The Olympians
For the reader who wants the strange-kid-turns-out-to-be-important shape with the philosophy swapped for jokes and a quest that moves like a road trip.
- A father worth rescuing
- A girl who is angry and awkward
- Travel by tesseract
- Comic register throughout
What should you read after A Wrinkle in Time?
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson — paterson writes the same kind of child L'Engle did: prickly, unpopular, smarter than the adults allow, and saved less by magic than by one person deciding to see her clearly.
If what stayed with you was a brain that runs a planet, read The Giver by Lois Lowry instead: camazotz with the volume turned down and the lights left on: a whole community keeping perfect time because someone decided sameness was kinder than choice. Coraline by Neil Gaiman is the other strong option — another child walking into a wrong version of home and having to out-stubborn it. Gaiman gives you IT's seduction in miniature, with buttons where the eyes should be.
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