I still remember watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in the theater as a kid. The nearest movie theater was an hour’s drive from our little town in the Deep Midwest, so we didn’t get to go more than a few times a year. I’d been begging my parents to take us to see E.T. for weeks when they finally surprised me for my 8th birthday. I was enchanted from the start, so wrapped up in the story by the time Eliot said goodbye to E.T. that […]
Becoming Madeleine
Two of Madeleine L’Engle’s grandchildren have taken the stories of their grandmother, her journal entries, some never-before-seen photographs, letters and memories and made a biography of L’Engle’s life. Focusing on her early years, the authors paint a picture of how the woman who is known as a great writer got there. From a life of emotional ups and downs, boarding schools, war, the theater, writing, rejections, death, love and friendships, L’Engle comes to life. Maybe it is fitting Farrar Straus is publishing this biography, as […]
Wonderfully Creative
I really enjoyed this book. Coming in at under 150 pages, it’s a quick read, which is good because I just wanted to keep going, especially once the characters were on their journey to Camazotz. I recalled reading this novel twice before, once in elementary school when I didn’t really “get” it, and I don’t recall how I viewed it upon my second reading, but this time I got it (although I’m still not sure just how much tesseracts make sense to me as used […]
In Which Our Intrepid Reader Takes a Trip Down Memory Lane
“It was a dark and stormy night.” The opening of this book imprinted itself on my ten-year-old brain in ways I didn’t fully realize until I returned to it over four decades later. I first read A Wrinkle in Time in 1975 when my grandmother, a children’s librarian, gave me a copy for my birthday. It wasn’t just any copy; it was a signed copy that my grandmother had purchased in 1963 when she attended the Newberry-Caldecott award dinner in Chicago—almost two years before my […]