Comments on: Top 100 Children’s Novels #2: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

By: Sonderbooks » Blog Archive » #4 Children’s Novelist – Madeleine L’Engle

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:46:08 +0000

[...] Here’s Betsy’s post about A Wrinkle in Time. [...]

By: Benjamin Collinsworth

Benjamin Collinsworth — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:05:56 +0000

2 things I recommend listening to:

1. The audiobooks of the whole series, narrated by L’Engle. Her voice work is pretty great, and in her introduction she explains that while writing the books she read them to her own children. It’s sort of awesome to hear the stories from that perspective.

2. This NPR interview/appreciation of L’Engle and A Wrinkle in Time with astronaut Janice Voss. The transcript spells it all out, but in the audio you can hear Voss get choked up discussing how the book helped to shape her career as well as her character.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14266537

By: Genevieve

Genevieve — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:59:33 +0000

Two is still terrific (though I had hoped for one). The closest book to my heart of all my childhood books.

By: Brandy

Brandy — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:03:24 +0000

I was kind of hoping it would take over the top spot as well. Sigh. Oh well. Two is still awesome.

By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:54:47 +0000

<3 I knew I was being unrealistic when I thought the 50th Anniversary might have helped it stage a hostile takeover of the #1 spot. But holding steady at #2 works, too.

By: Kate Coombs

Kate Coombs — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:20:06 +0000

“A creative and supple imagination”–perfect. I read a bio of L’Engle that said FSG did not have a children’s division at the time. A Wrinkle in Time was the first book they published just because John Farrar personally liked it so much. For a while A Wrinkle in Time WAS FSG’s children’s division. And then at the Newbery party, editors from other houses approached L’Engle, saying, “Why didn’t you send it to me?” She replied, “I did.” She had a drawerful of rejection slips to prove it. She had actually given up on publishing the book when her friend helped her get it into Farrar’s hands. (Can’t find the source this morning, but it was a pretty memorable account!)