More than mere serendipity lead me to rediscover A Wrinkle In Time, waiting in a friend's bookshelf for me to find & read - again. (Had no idea when I inadvertently borrowed it - it snuck into my stuff - it has the first edition dusk jacket! Dear friend, I'm taking EXTREMELY good care of it!)
Am deep in goose bumps, writing this at 5:46 a.m. of a Monday morning, dragged out sound slumbers 30 minutes ago by the insistent cat calls of two guardian angels that could have been right out of Wrinkle... - unworldly, but very much making their presence known. "Don't go back to sleep!"
Goosebumps because I reconnected with Wrinkle... the day after Oprah wrote a HuffPo piece about Billy Bob Thornton's call for us to return to wonder, which lead me to her new series on Belief, which includes a small portion by Mark Nepo who's teaching a workshop at Rowe I have on my 2016 wish list... Goosebumps!
Ya gotta love that the first line of Wrinkle... gives a sly wink of the author's eye, even as it deftly sets the scene - It was a dark & stormy night. I remember the first time reading that playful opening, an adult in my late twenties rather than a tween, and thinking, "Oooo, this is going to be FUN!"
Little did I know it would be transforming, too. Transforming in ways I'd forgotten, until reading it all over again this past weekend, rediscovering a book I'll never let go. (No worries, Adrienne - I'll get your copy back to you this week!) To devour Madeline L'Engle's story at the same time Billy Bob is calling on us to return to wonder - this was no mere serendipity!
Over & over, moments of WOW! swept through me, reading the just-right-length book. (Although one doofus editor suggested she cut her story in half!)
L'Engle varied in recounting how many publishers rejected her manuscript before it was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux - A LOT. And there are two different tales about how she connected with John Farrar! But the connection was made, the book published 2 1/2 years after it first came to her.
Good decision by Mr. Farrar - Wrinkle... nabbed the 1963 Newberry Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award -and- was among the finalists for the Hans Christian Andersen Award!
My favorite illustration of Calvin O'Keefe, Meg & Charles Murray!
It's astonishing how many writers continue singing the praises of A Wrinkle In Time. I'd check out one article only to be lead to another & another & another. Clearly, I'm not the only adult still wowed by Madeline L'Engle's story of children who feel like misfits, but find their power by simply (but not easily) being best versions of their true selves. No small accomplishment, just figuring out what that is!
I started this posting as a short & sweet tribute to a rediscovered book that speaks as strongly to me in 2015 as it did when I first read it in 1980. Turns out, there are a lot of postings in me waiting to be written about this remarkable book, its impact on me, the power it holds for a stunning number of others.
How does it WOW me? Come along, as I share the ways!
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