Almost everything we discuss here is assumed to be pleasure reading for kids, and although some Newbery titles are curriculum by now (GIVER, MANIAC MAGEE being the two I can think of offhand), once we hit middle and high school most of the books on school reading lists have traditionally been adult titles as opposed to YA. I think that’s changing (I only taught elementary, so can’t really say), but THE SCARLET LETTER was definitely curriculum when I was in high school and I think still is in Virginia, so you will have lots of teens reading it (possibly unwillingly!).

From Wikipedia–

When she completed the book in early 1960, it was rejected by at least 26 publishers, because it was, in L’Engle’s words, “too different”, and “because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children’s or an adults’ book, anyhow?”

L’Engle explains another possible reason for the rejections: “A Wrinkle in Time had a female protagonist in a science fiction book,” which at the time “wasn’t done” according to L’Engle. After trying “forty-odd” publishers (L’Engle later said “twenty-six rejections”), L’Engle’s agent returned the manuscript to her. Then at Christmas, L’Engle threw a tea party for her mother. One of the guests happened to know John C. Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and insisted that L’Engle should meet with him. Although the publisher did not at the time publish a line of children’s books, Farrar met L’Engle, liked the novel and ultimately published it.

From the Washington Post–

Finally, one publisher, John Farrar, decided that “Wrinkle’s” uniqueness was what made it worth publishing. He didn’t expect it to sell many copies, though, let alone win the Newbery. L’Engle herself was surprised that so many kids loved the book. She didn’t set out to write a kids book. She wrote what was in her head, whatever that was, and she felt she had no power to change the story that came out.

(Agreed, by the way, that I’d rather see TKAM in the Newbery canon than CNV.)

Madeleine L’Engle clearly wrote A WRINKLE IN TIME as a children’s book, and I’m sure that most, if not all, of the 2-3 dozen publishers that rejected the book were children’s publishers. I’m sure Farrar thought of this as a children’s book when they published it even though they didn’t publish children’s books, but since their marketing team wasn’t hip to the children’s scene, I wonder what kind of advertisting push it got, and how the sales team got it into bookstores and libraries. Was the book even submitted to the committee? I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but my guess is that this was a vigilant committee that went out of their way to find this book and recognize it.

I really don’t care who a book is published for, the real question is how do children respond to it. Some books are published for adults that succeed wonderfully at presentation for a child audience. Some books are published for children that fail miserably at presentation for a child audience. I haven’t the slightest clue how children would respond to THE ROUND HOUSE, but you can bet that if I found it sufficiently distinguished, and I was curious about how it appealed to children, whether it respected their abilities, understandings, and appreciations, then I would field test it on junior high students until I felt that I could answer those questions with confidence.