Cereal Box Authors 1: Madeleine L'Engle

Didja ever find an author whose work you enjoyed so much that you started an all-out quest to find everything that author had ever written? And then when you finished the last book, you realized that you'd read cereal boxes if that was the only way to get more work by your author? It happens to me all the time and rather than try to summarize each book by the authors I love, it seems to make more sense to tell you about my cereal box authors and you can go find them for yourself.

Madeleine L'Engle (pronounced lingle) was my second cereal box author (the first was Laura Ingalls Wilder, but that's another post) and my all-time favorite author through adolescence and into early adulthood. She is probably most famous for A Wrinkle in Time, which I read when I was in fourth grade. It made more sense when I was in fifth or sixth grade, but I was already hooked by then. If you've only read the Wrinkle in Time trilogy (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet), you only know about a quarter of the story.

The Arm of the Starfish indirectly continues the Wrinkle series with less fantasy and more dramatic, spy-novel style. The main character, Adam Eddington, has been offered a summer position as an intern to famous biological researcher Calvin O'Keefe. On his way to the island where O'Keefe lives and works, Adam meets Kali, an incredibly beautiful and seductive young woman who throws herself, literally, into Adam's arms. But Kali may not be exactly what she seems in a book that's all about difficult choices in the face of deception. Ultimately Adam will have to choose between the scientist he respects and beautiful girl who seems to offer him fascinating possibilities. Not every book I enjoyed as an adolescent has held up to re-reading as an adult, but The Arm of the Starfish is still fantastic (and now on my summer reading list). A number of characters from this book will resurface in other L'Engle books, which is one of my favorite things about her work.

The Austin series begins with Meet the Austins, and includes The Young Unicorns and A Ring of Endless Light. Those focus on Vicky Austin and her family and can get a little bit preachy about choosing between good versus evil and light versus dark, but I read them over and over from middle school through college. Vicky reassuringly reminded me of myself: awkward, a little plain, not very confident and hyper-aware of all her own flaws. She does, however, manage to find courage and faith in herself when she needs it most (that was the reassuring part). Like most of L'Engle's work there is always drama and struggle and hard choices with just enough romance thrown in to keep things interesting without making you want to vomit.

Then there are the odd novels that don't seem to connect (but really do if you read everything), like The Small Rain, A Severed Wasp, And Both Were Young, and Dragons in the Waters. Several of L'Engle's adult books -- Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea and Ilsa also refer obliquely to characters that have appeared in her young adult work. In addition to fiction, L'Engle wrote several memoirs and volumes of poetry. Much of L'Engle's later work, prose and poetry, focused on Christianity, including, occasionally, her struggles with faith in the face of trial.

I met Madeleine L'Engle at King College in 1986 (I was a junior in high school). [If I can find the picture I have of the two of us together I'll post it.] My favorite part of her work, aside from recognizing myself in it, has always been the recurring characters and different relationships they form from book to book. During the question and answer session after her lecture I found myself pleading for Adam Eddington and Vicky Austin to wind up together in the end. L'Engle smiled and told me that she wasn't really in control of what her characters did; they seemed to choose that for themselves. Madeleine L'Engle died in October of 2007, but somewhere, I have faith that Adam and Vicky are alive and well, enjoying their lives together.