With Love From Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle is perhaps the best-known contemporary writer of children’s fiction. But when she passed away earlier this year, she left for us a smart and amusing collection of books and essays mostly for adults. In addition to award-willing children’s books like A Wrinkle in Time, she also wrote wonderfully and extensively on literature, writing, and the Christian life and faith.

Like all good writers, she creatively presents the human experience to us for contemplation. What I like best about L’Engle is her wholistic interpretation of the human experience. Throughout her fantasy and memoir works, she breathes meaning into what we often perceive as mundane, day-to-day tasks like chores and work. L’Engle teaches her readers that the small things we do each day work together intimately to form something much larger and more meaningful; she knows that in the midst of grocery shopping and checking email, we are invited to participate in God’s work of renewing the world and reconciling all people to himself.

Through sometimes serious and sometimes laugh-out-loud storytelling, she also gives to us one of the great gifts of literature: it “takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm.”

Where to Start Nearly every summer I re-read L’Engle’s four-part memoir series, The Crosswicks Journals. (A Circle of Quiet, the first book of the series, is on my short list of favorite books.) Her hilarious stories and thoughtful reflections about her children, her home, and nature are comforting because she normalizes and ascribes beauty to the humdrum of daily life.

If a four-part series is a little intimidating for those who aren’t big readers, pick up A Wrinkle in Time (winner of the Newberry Medal). This short sci-fi novel (don’t rule it out yet!) about time travel was written for young readers but is equally compelling for adults.

To learn more about Madeleine L’Engle, visit her official website.