A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle
Middle grade · ages 10–14 · 740L (~4th grade) · 250 pages · 2002
Why we'd hand it over
Sixty years old and still the most intellectually ambitious middle-grade adventure in print — dense, unapologetically strange, and quietly radical about what makes a girl a hero.
What parents said
The third and fourth books in the series I think would present some challenges for even an advanced 5 year old