Meg Murray, Will Stanton, & Mr. Rochester

Last week, I was sad to read in the NYTimes online that Madeline L'Engle died. I've been thinking a lot about her and A Wrinkle in Time ever since because AWIT was one of those stories that strongly imprinted my childhood imagination. I received the book from my grandmother on my 10th birthday. Here's what the inscription on the inside of cover of my slightly yellow-paged hardcover says:

To Jennifer. A very special book* for a very special young lady on her tenth birthday. Love Grammy. 11/13/75

* I attended the Newberry-Caldecott dinner at which M. L'Engle received the Newberry and spoke. I've saved this book purchased at that time for you--altho in 1963 you weren't around. Keats won the Cadecott for The Snowy Day, which was your first book.

My copy is not a first edition. It's a fouth printing from 1963, complete with the gold Newberry award seal on its plastic-coated cover (very library circa the 60's and 70's). Yet . . . do I even need to say that it is priceless?

I love the idea that in 1963, my grandmother is picking out books for the granddaughter (granddaughters) she didn't even know she would have. It would be another year and half before my parents would meet in a crowded bar in Grinnell, Iowa (or so the story I've been told goes). I was less than a glimmer, less than a possibility, yet my reading life was already being created. How could I not have become a book addict?

Another memory springs to mind. It's 1976 and Kris Z. and I are playing Barbies with a doll house that my mom helped me make out of an old white bookshelf--each cubby in the shelf is a separate room. Only Kris and I don't have Barbie dolls. I have a Sunshine Family doll--the mother with blonde, shiny hair--and we have tons of animal figurines, including a light brown Great Dane, made out of this "pleather" like material. We're not playing a typical Barbie scenario. We're playing Dr. Who. The blonde doll is Josephine Grant, the Doctor's assistant. We don't have a doll that can adequately represent The Doctor so we pretend that a freak lab accident has rendered him invisible. And the Great Dane . . . we call him Mr. Rochester (from a book we read that I have now forgotten but should try to google). Looking back, I love that we are cutting and pasting from books and TV to create a world that is all our own. Embarrassingly geeky but . . . ours. No picking out the perfect outfit or worrying about whether Ken will call. We're fighting the ultimate evil . . .of course.

What's the connection between this memory and A Wrinkle in Time? Looking back, I realize that books by Madeline L'Engle, Susan Cooper, and even C.S. Lewis pulled me into their worlds and made me want to be a superhero, to have magic adventures, to save the world, etc. And if I'm honest with myself, that 10 year-old-self has never completely gone away.

So, until the magic adventure strikes, I'll tune into the next season of Heroes, watch old Buffy DVDS, and sneak young adult fiction out of the public library.

Thank you Madeline and viva la imaginacion!


(Post-Google Info: Mr. Rochester is the name of the Great Dane in L'Engle's book, Meet the Austins. If you're wondering, Fortinbras is the name of the dog in A Wrinkle in Time.)