The Death of an Idol

It's funny how bad news travels sometimes. I never expected to see an obituary in Publisher's Weekly's Daily Newsletter, and if you'd asked me who a PW Daily obituary would be about, I'd never have guessed the beloved Madeline L'Engle.

I was very young--probably too young--when A Wrinkle in Time first showed up on my bookshelf. It took me years to pick it up, but when I did...I don't think any amount of cliches will fill that blank, truthfully. I felt the same way some people have felt about Ender's Game, Pride and Prejudice, The Lord of the Rings and/or The Hobbit, and countless other great works: it changed me. Not just my life. Me. I may have dreamed of Tesseracts and mitocondritis and seraphim and mediums (admittedly, I remember searching my mind for the right definition when the medium was introduced, and not finding it in "stuff you make art with" and "a size," I decided that it would be better to read on than waste time with a dictionary); I may have imagined myself as Meg a thousand more times than I actually remember. But what really matters, all these years afterwards, is that it was the first book I remember with great passion still burning from the first time I picked it up.

I remember the feel of the storm in the book, the intensity of Meg's leadership and maternal instinct and love for Calvin, the joy of new creatures and success, and the worry about an darkness spreading through the universe. I vowed that I would be one of the journeyers who set out to save existence. And I had that book in my hand when I realized that I, too, wanted to write. And not write just anything, either. I craved more fantasy of my own making. And of L'Engle's as well. So I finished the Time Quintet and picked up the books she wrote about Victoria Austin (whose nickname I disliked, but who I adored, none the less). Through her work, I realized the possibilities of writing interconnected series, of searching for deep and timeless meaning in life and using it to inspire youth...youth like me.

A Wrinkle in Time had done for me what The Hobbit had done for my mom and her generation of YA readers. And it earned some of the highest honors in the history of adolescent literature. I even used it as a source in my honors thesis. To have met her, to have been honored with the chance to tell her that yet one more child's direction in life was given momentum and motivation through her work would have been an opportunity of a lifetime...

I am blessed to have people in my life who knew her work well enough to give it to me. One day, I'll give it to my sister, my children, my nieces and nephews, anyone impressionable child I can find. =)

At eighty-nine years old, she'd lived a very long and (from what I can gather) fulfilling life. I hope she knew the effect her work had on the world, on the genre of literature she chose to write. If she did, maybe she found comfort in the knowledge that her books outlast the days she saw in person.

...But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.-- Sonnet 18, W. Shakespeare