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• You have to write the book that wants to be written.
And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups,
then you write it for children.--Madeleine L’Engle
• Very few children have any problem with the world of the imagination;
it’s their own world, the world of their daily life,
and it’s our loss that so many of us grow out of it.--Madeleine L’Engle
• A book comes and says, "Write me."
My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability,
which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it,
do what it tells me and collaborate.--Madeleine L’Engle
I am fyn and I am pleased to be guest editing this issue of the Fantasy Newsletter! |
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A new Star shines ever brightly in the heavens she so often wrote about!
Madeleine L’Engle, the author whose childhood fables, most memorably her children’s classic “A Wrinkle in Time,” died on Thursday, September 6th in Litchfield, Conn. She was 88.
I was introduced to the writings of Madeleine L’Engle shortly after
she won the Newberry Award for “A Wrinkle in Time” in August 1963. It was
my favorite Christmas present that year, and from then on, I was hooked.
I've never forgotten the first lines of the book which begins,
"It was a dark and stormy night," using the line
of a 19th-century novelist, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.
“A Wrinkle in Time” was rejected by 26 publishers before
editors at Farrar, Straus & Giroux read it
and enthusiastically accepted it. It proved to be her masterpiece, winning the John Newbery Medal as the best children’s book of 1963
and selling, so far, eight million copies. It is now in its 69th printing.
Ms L'Engle introduced me to far off worlds, far reaching imagination,
and fantasy that stretched beyond fairy tales. To me, indeed to many of her fans,
she is the epitome of what fantasy writers are, and she certainly
opened the realm of fantasy fiction to a whole generation of readers, especially,
female, preteen readers who learned that they too could reach for the stars.
Maths and sciences suddenly seemed not just for the boys anymore
and this was, in the early 1960's,a new (although long overdue,) concept!
Later in life, after having introduced all her children's books to my children
as we read them out loud over many a winter's night, I was encouraged by her
persistence...if she could keep trying after her book was turned down by 26 publishers, so could I. So I did. And it was my 26th publisher who accepted my book for publication.
The St. James Guide to Children’s Writers called Ms. L’Engle
“one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades.”
Yet her book, “A Wrinkle in Time”, at various times has been banned more times in
the united States than any other for exposing impressionable minds with myth and fantasy and confusing children with inaccurate renditions of God. Initially horrified
by such comments and thoughts, Ms L'Engle finally decided that there would always bedetractors to fantasy works and that it really was good publicity after all.
When asked about the Harry potter series, she would comment that it was all story with 'nothing beneath it' to hold it up. Her works were solidly based upon scientific principles that at least existed in theory. The book uses concepts that Ms. L’Engle said she had 'plucked from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory,' almost flaunting her frequent assertion that 'children’s literature
is literature too difficult for adults to understand.'
It is sad when a favorite author passes away. The beloved characters like Meg
(who Ms L'Engle said was 'herself, of course!') Charles Wallace and Polly all seem to take on a ghostly cast and perhaps in some literary dimension they are mourning too.
My grandchildren happened to visit that Thursday, arriving shortly after I read
about Ms L'Engle's passing. They came tumbling into the
house all yelling for 'Grand.' I had to smile. I am called 'Grand' because
that's what Polly called her grandmother. I remember thinking as a child
that when I grew up, was married, and had grandchildren one day,
that that is what my grandkids would call me. Thank you, Madeleine L’Engle!
L'Engle wanted her writing to affirm that "Life is worth living; the adventure is worth taking." She also believed, "If you write about the deepest issues of the heart, they're there in every generation."
“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."
From her Newberry Award Acceptance Speech in August 1963, Ms L'Engle said, "A writer of fantasy, fairly tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider.
I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’t possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant. Very few children have any problem with the world of the imagination; it’s their own world, the world of their daily life, and it’s our loss that so many of us grow out of it."
"Up on the summit of Mohawk Mountain in northwest Connecticut is a large flat rock that holds the heat of the sun long after the last of the late sunset has left the sky.
We take our picnic up there and then lie on the rock and watch the stars,
one pulsing slowly into the deepening blue, and then another and another and another,
until the sky is full of them. A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material,
capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness,
leading out into the expanding universe."
Madeleine L’Engle will always be, for me, an ever bright and shining star.
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Many more humans could have been saved, but life as a bodiless machine floating through space was too much for most to accept. They could not consider a life without substance and form and chose to perish instead.
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Meandering around the attic, I listened to the beams creaking behind me as I searched for my stuffed animals. But, why were the creaky beams always behind me? I stopped to listen, a creak, and then silence. Were my ears playing tricks on me? Or an echo perhaps? It was silly, being afraid of the creaky beams in an old, dusty attic. I knew if my friends were here, they would never let me live it down! Yet, something wasn’t quite right. Where were the bugs and spiders, which should have been everywhere? Surely, it wasn’t so nasty and dingy here that even bugs didn’t want to live here?
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Sure enough the Lady arrived in the cooler days of autumn, wrapped in bright clothes and she brought with her all those things proper to the household of such an important person. She set up her house and was like a jewel in the town, shining brightly on the people around her and performing as one of her class should.
{bitem: 1324830}
I'm staring at death itself, yet I stand. I stand in defiance of fear, in defiance of pain. |
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| I am guest editing this issue, so I have no feedback to offer. Perhaps you will find the time to experience 'A Wrinkle in Time' if you've not read it before, or if you have, curl up with it like and old friend and journey once again into the wonderous world of Madeleine L’Engle. |
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Fantasy: October 03, 2007 Issue [#1984]
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