sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

September 7, 2007


sad day
posted by soe 1:58 pm

Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite authors growing up, has died.

Her books featuring young adult heroes combined the spiritual and the scientific and played up smart, misunderstood characters negotiating the chasm between childhood and adulthood. She understood teenagers in a way that many people don’t and tried to offer some insights to help you to navigate through the mess of life.

I pulled out A Wrinkle in Time only last week. I must have felt her soul rustling in the cosmos…

I leave you with this quote from that esteemed old friend:

Mrs Whatisit: A sonnet is a very strict form of poetry is it not? There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter, yes? And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?

Calvin: You mean you’re comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?

Mrs Whatsit: Yes. You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

A lesson worth remembering…

Category: books. There is/are 3 Comments.



Her books are on the official How To Understand Emily Reading List. I think it’s time for some memorial binge reading.

Comment by emily 09.07.07 @ 4:36 pm

Ah, A Wrinkle in Time is one of my childhood favorites! So sorry to hear she’s gone.

Comment by Julie 09.07.07 @ 5:10 pm

I had a cold when I read A Wrinkle in Time and my sinuses were filled with an ichy stench of cold bacteria or virus mixed with the over-sweet smell of a library book that has gotten old and is rotting away.

Oddly, the effect of this is to take this strange and normally not-described-as-pleasant odor and forever link it in my mind to the story. Now when I get a cold and start to be able to smell my sinuses more than my environment, it brings A Wrinkle in Time rushing back into my head. It doesn’t make having a cold a good thing, but it is a fond memory to be stirred up while suffering through an illness, and always brightens things up a little.

Comment by Grey Kitten 09.08.07 @ 5:10 pm