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…