Names from my youth are dropping like flies:
Madeleine L’Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.
Madeleine L’Engle at home in New York in 2001.
Her death, of natural causes, was announced today by her publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Ms. L’Engle (pronounced LENG-el) was best known for her children’s classic, “A Wrinkle in Time,” which won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.
My mother used to teach adolescent literature, and I was a willing test market. You name it, I read it as a child.
Cain
All the Beverly Cleary books? Eg Ramona the Brave, Ralph and the Motorcycle. There was some other ones that I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I’ve ever read “A wrinkle in time”. Was there a movie version as well? The title seems familiar.
cain
Bibblesnæð
Man, why is it that they can’t write “wove” or “woven”? Ugh. And the press has made up its collective mind now that it’s “strived” and “thrived” rather than “strove, striven” and “throve, thriven”. Geez, I don’t want to sound like an old fogy, since I’m not old enough to fogitate, but really, irregular verbs are just more fun than regulars. That’s why I say, “sneeze, snoze, snozen” and “squeeze, squoze, squozen” and “surprise, surprose, surprisen”. It has nothing to do with “good grammar”, but rather with sounding funny, which is always more fun. That’s why we’ll be teaching our 4 month old daughter to say this stuff (or at least I will until my wife finds out). I know this has nothing to do with L’Engle’s death, which saddens me, but the “weaved” thing just “cheesed me off” as Graham Chapman would say…
Bibblesnæð
Beverly Cleary still seems to be alive, as far as I can tell. Being a guy, I was more into the Henry Huggins and Ribsy books than Beezus & Ramona. Everybody loves Runaway Ralph, though, male or female…
John Cole
Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, SE Hinton, ME Kerr, Robert Cormier, Paul Zindel, and so on.
There are too many to talk about- The Chocolate Wars, The Pigman, Bang the Drum Slowly, Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack. I could go on and on.
Zifnab
Oh man, “A Wrinkle in Time” was, like, the pre-teen’s introduction to trippy post-modernist Sci-Fi. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s still an incredible book to read. The book has all the futuristic lingo and metaphysical explainations of an Asimov book mixed in with a healthy dose of social commentary a la George Orwell.
As an author, L’Engle is freak’n absolutely fantastic. She will be deeply missed.
demimondian
I fell in love with Lloyd Alexander’s _Prydain_ series, and never escaped.
Andrew J. Lazarus
How did Roald Dahl get left off the list?
Bibblesnæð
So what’sthe deal? Did Beverly Cleary die? I hadn’t heard anything…
Bubblegum Tate
Wow. L’engle gave a speech at my sister’s college graduation that was utterly fantastic. RIP indeed.
Pb
Ah, that was a great book, and a freaky series. I remember, in school, making a board game based around one of those books, in fact.
You made that one up, right? Great title, anyhow. Sounds like a future Republican scandal?
Tom Hilton
I was wondering if maybe Beverly Cleary was a pseudonym for Madeleine l’Engle. But then I figured out that Cain brought up Cleary in response to John’s “you name it, I read it” (about adolescent literature).
I have very little memory of Wrinkle in Time, except I think I was underwhelmed when I read it. If l’Engle was religious, that might explain my reaction.
Read the Prydain books, of course. Read Cormier (The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese) while getting my teaching credential–excellent stuff.
Tom Hilton
And Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack was one of those ’70s naturalistic social problem type novels that I avoided assiduously (having no interest whatsoever in the hell known to most people as the ‘real world’).
Speaking of that genre…last Sunday there was this whole Summer of Love Reunion shindig in the park, and we could hear the music blasting, and I guess Grace Slick was one of the acts because we heard “Somebody to Love” and, of course, “White Rabbit”. So later we were on the bus and there was an earnest-looking young woman reading…yes, you guessed it: the quintessential work of the adolescent naturalism genre; Go Ask Alice.
Doubting Thomas
It made a big impression on me as a 6th grader and got me into reading Sci-fi. Religious it wasn’t. It ultimately led me to Ursula K. LeGinn, so I’m forever grateful.
Tom Hilton
Hmm. I don’t know what it was, then–somehow I just didn’t really connect with it the way I did with a lot of other things I read at the time.
jake
Ah shit. The WiT series was really great. Due to odd schooling I read cheery things like 1984 for class and had to find L’Engle on my own.
Don’t forget J.R.R. You-know-who.
Teak111
OT, calling it right now, that is a fake Osama bin Laden:
thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/analyzing-bin-ladens-words-and-beard/index.html?hp
Pb
Teak111,
Yeah, the Osama tapes have jumped the shark. But I find it funny that they’re comparing it to the 2004 [Bush re-election] tape, considering how many people disputed that bin Laden at the time. Find a pre-9/11 photo to work from, will ya…
Psycheout
Is Osama going to be the left’s Presidential candidate in 2008?
Like Hugo Chavez, Progressive Osama Hearts Chomsky.
I see an Air America hosting job in bin Laden’s future.
Randy Paul
Is Osama going to be the left’s Presidential candidate in 2008?
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Geoduck
A universally-panned movie adaptation aired a couple years back on (I think) ABC. As others have noted, the original book is well worth reading; it was one of the favorites of my youth as well.
Surabaya Stew
Yeah, I loved “A Wrinkle in Time” growing up, but i never realized how it great it was until I re-read it a few years ago. The only other book with a greater influence on me as a kid was “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster; now there’s another great writer!
Darkwater
ABC or Disney. Maybe a Disney production that was ported over to ABC. The movie ended up being about a spunky heroine who ends up helpless and requires rescuing at a critical moment, which, from what I remember, neither accurately reflects Meg Murray nor the book’s plot.
Tim in SF
Lots of things happening with the books of our child hood.
Lion, Witch and Wardrobe was finally made into a movie which looked like the book.
The Dark is Rising (my personal childhood favorite) is coming to the big screen soon (I am very worried).
I have fond memories of the White Mountains, the rights to which Disney bought in 1997.
RIP, Ms. L’Engle.
TrishB
I loved L’Engle’s books as a kids. Hell, as an adult too.
For Tim in SF – what I have read about the Dark is Rising movie makes me very skeptical that they even read the damn book. Setting it in the US, for starters.
Geoduck
A British outfit did a White Mountains/Tripods adaptation ten or so years back. It wasn’t terribly faithful the original and had the usual low UK production values, but it was still pretty good. Unfortunately, the production ended on a massive cliffhanger and was never finished..
joel hanes
> You name it, I read it
Half Magic
Goneaway Lake
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
The Wheel On The School
The Mad Scientists Club
And Now Miguel
Minn of the Mississippi
Silver Chief, Dog of the North
demimondian
You can’t write the Dark is Rising without Wales, seeing as how one of the key characters is Arthur’s son…
grumpy realist
Oh….Joel, thank you! Anyone else here having read The Mad Scientists Club? I loved those books.
BTW, if anyone is interested, the two original collection of stories have been republished, along with two other “Mad Scientists Clubs” books written by the same author. Both are full-length novels and are quite good. Check out the website http://www.themadscientistsclub.com
Two other books to mention: The Face in the Frost (John Bellairs) and The Mouse and his Child (Russell Hoban).