It took Madeleine L'Engle two years to find a publisher for her 1962 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. Most editors feared the sci-fi/fantasy about a young girl's quest to save her physicist dad from IT, a giant pulsating brain, would be too tough for kids. Librarians disagreed and awarded it the Newbery Medal. On the book's 50th anniversary, a look at the numbers:
10 million: Number of copies in print
90th: Ranking on the American Library Association's list of "most challenged" books (objections have ranged from L'Engle's "occultic worldview" to her overt Christianity)
60: Number of books written by L'Engle, who died in 2007 at 88
26: Rejection letters L'Engle received before her novel was bought by a friend of a friend, John Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1: Copy sent into space in 1997aboard the space shuttle Endeavor with astronaut Janice Voss, who says the novel sparked her interest in space when she was in sixth grade
1: Other Newbery Award-winning novel that's a homage to A Wrinkle in Time: Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me (2009). Stead's main character reads A Wrinkle in Time.
USA Today