I received some sad news yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about it today.
I am about a week late in learning of the death of Madeleine L’Engle. She was 88. And she was a genius of a storyteller. And, although she never knew it, she was instrumental in making me who I am.
As a child, her A Wrinkle in Time, and its sequels were life-changing, favourite books of mine. She practically invented the genre of young adult fantasy/sci fi for my generation. Loving her books opened my mind to the world of fantasy reading and made way for me to love Tolkien and Lewis and Pratchett and Stewart and McAffrey. And Rowling.
In 1995, when I was trying to find a clever, meaningful name for my new small business, she inspired me again. My A Wardrobe in Time came from the merger of my intentions to create “clothing through the ages” and the wordplay of C.S. Lewis’ best-known Narnia title and Madeleine L’Engle’s Newberry Award-winning time travel book.
I finally finished reading the last Harry Potter book today. I know that to thousands of young readers, J.K. Rowling is now, what Madeleine L’Engle was to me in the 1960s. A talented, imaginative woman writing wonderful stories—as though they were just for me.
The world is a little more wrinkled this week, the planet a little more tilted, the ring of light—seemingly not so endless. Madeleine L’Engle will be missed, but what a legacy she leaves us! What a gift.
Madeleine L’Engle
1918-2007
~MB
