'A Wrinkle in Time' author Madeleine L'Engle dies at 88
By Cara Rubinsky AP
Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel
A Wrinkle in Time has captivated generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88. The Newbery Medal winner wrote more than 60 books, including fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often highlighting spiritual themes and her Christian faith.
For many years, she was the writer in residence and librarian at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City. Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children. "In my dreams, I never have an age," she said. "I never write for any age group in mind. When people do, they tend to be tolerant and condescending and they don't write as well as they can write. "When you underestimate your audience, you're cutting yourself off from your best work."
A Wrinkle in Time- which L'Engle said was rejected repeatedly before it found a publisher in 1962 - won the American Library Association's 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children's book. Her
A Ring of Endless Light was a Newbery Honor Book, or medal runner-up, in 1981. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. Keith Call, special collections assistant at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has a collection of L'Engle's papers, said he considers her the female counterpart of science fiction author Ray Bradbury because people loved her personally as much as they loved her books. "She was tremendously important initially as a children's book author, and then as she wrote meditative Christian essays, that sort of expanded her audience," he said. "She spoke exactly the way she wrote, very elegant, no nonsense, crisp, and deeply spiritual." After Harry Potter mania swept the world of children's literature, "A Wrinkle in Time" was often cited as a precursor or, for frantic Potter fans, something to read while waiting for their hero's next installment. L'Engle told Newsweek in 2006 that she had read one Potter book and, "It's a nice story but there's nothing underneath it. I don't want to be bothered with stuff where there's nothing underneath."
L'Engle graduated from Smith College in 1941 and worked as an actress in New York City. There, she met her future husband, Hugh Franklin, an accomplished stage actor. In 1945, her first book, "The Small Rain," was published; she and Franklin married the following year. They moved to Connecticut in 1951 and for several years, the couple ran a general store to make ends meet. They had a son, and two daughters. The couple had adopted one daughter after her parents, who were friends of theirs, died. The family later moved back to New York; Franklin died of cancer in 1986. L'Engle recounts their years together in her 1988 book, "Two Part Invention." A New York Times reviewer said L'Engle "does not shrink from describing the difficult trials as well as the joys of her married life."
And here's a favorite quote of mine from this great lady:
"The one thing we know about God for certain is that
God is Love. Where there is not love, even if there is righteousness, or justice, it is not God.......To be human is to be fallible, but it is also to be capable of love and to be able to retain that childlike openness which enables us to go bravely into the darkness and towards that life of love and truth which will set us free."
(taken from Glimpses of Grace....a devotional that compiled her writings.)
