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.