Celebrated author Madeleine L’Engle touched the hearts and minds of children and adults across many generations, an achievement recognized by the many awards she received, including the 1963 Newbery for “A Wrinkle in Time”. Guides to children’s literature laud her as one of the most important contributors to the genre in this century (St. James Guide to Children’s Writers; New York Times Book Review).
Beyond juvenile fiction, however, L’Engle’s body of work encompassed poetry, plays, memoir, Christian apologetics, prayer guides, science fiction and fantasy, historical fiction and more. She published 60 books during her lifetime.
When someone important dies, eulogies are written, proclaiming how “a bright star has gone out.” While the analogy of a star is more than fitting for Madeleine L’Engle, describing her death as the extinguishing of her light would be to miss the entire point.
In her writing — fiction and nonfiction, for children or for adults — L’Engle professed a fervent belief in the powerful impact one event or one life can have. An enormous part of her writing is dedicated to the ripple effect each event, each life can have on others, flowing out into an exponentially larger web of connections. This was a keystone of her faith, and shows up as a theme and a plot device throughout her writing.
Indeed, her life, her writing, her faith, and her imagination have created a legacy that shines on. I am one of those touched by her, my life significantly changed by just a few of her words. And with that change, I become living testimony to the connections in which she believed. There is a scene from one of her books in “The Wrinkle in Time” series that both radically altered my thinking and cemented beliefs I already had.
In the second book from her Time Quintet, titled “A Wind in the Door”, Meg Murry has been transported inside her little brother Charles Wallace’s cells. The mitochondria inside his cells are sick, and the fight to save him becomes the central action of this adventure.
In a wonderful combination of symbolism and science fiction, Meg must convince tiny parts of the mitochondria to advance to the next stage of their growth. They must move from their lives as free-moving, mouse- or tadpole-like creatures to “deepen” into their adult form as kelp-like trees. Imagine convincing a caterpillar that it must create the cocoon that will transform it into a butterfly.
Through breathtaking, sensitive, imaginative storytelling, L’Engle shows the reader how it is only through choosing to take root in your home that one truly grows and experiences a life of deeper purpose.
And so it is after my years of free movement throughout the country, in and out of many adventures, I have come to put down roots in my hometown. I do believe that being an adult means making definite choices that may, at first, seem limiting — “After I take these vows, I’ll wake up next to this same woman for the rest of my life?” — but in reality give us a home in which we truly blossom. We can really only feel free when we have a foundation on which to build, roots that go deep, so limbs can reach for the sky.
Thanks, Madeleine.
Kevin Coolidge is currently a full-time factory worker, and a part-time bookseller at From My Shelf Books & Gifts in Wellsboro, Pa. When he’s not working, he’s writing. He’s also a children’s author and the creator of The Totally Ninja Raccoons, a children’s series for reluctant readers. Visit his author website at kevincoolidge.org
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