Oh, this is sad news (although not entirely a surprise). I liked A Wrinkle in Time, and it helped make me the genre fan I am today, but I utterly cherish And Both Were Young. It's one of the five or six books I re-read annually.

Damn.

I just got a discarded copy of this at the library book sale a couple of weeks ago. Seems like a good time to reread it.

Man, I feel like I have a hole in my heart. Not quite as bad as losing Andre Norton, but still, kinda achey.

I was Meg Murray, too. Seeing myself in a book was a huge comfort. I was always grateful to have Meg as part of my adolescence.

I loved her books. I will miss her.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet was the book that made me want to be a writer. I was so struck by the way the story was crafted, by the different threads that wove in and out and then all came together, beautiful and bittersweet, at the end, that I knew I wanted to do that: to tell stories, and tell them so very well.

I'll miss her.

... Until I found out that so many women I knew, like you, saw themselves in her.

Looking back on it, A Wrinkle in Time actually helps me understand how women might feel, being "othered" by the fiction they read, because while the story itself included enough compelling concepts to keep me reading, everything that came from Meg's point of view felt like a completely foreign language to me (bear in mind, I was in early grade school at the time), and when I realized that Calvin O'Keefe was meant to be "the boy" of the story, in the sense of being anything approaching the male counterpart of the female hero, I suppose my reaction was similar to that of women who realize that "the girl" of any given male-oriented story is somehow meant to represent them.

Good writer, interesting ideas, but trying to relate to her characters' emotions felt like trying to think in Russian. Then again, us boys could benefit from being forced to think in a foreign language every now and then.

Oh dear, that does hurt a lot.

I grew up with A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle was a beautiful writer.

I love your note about Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which coming for their friend at last.

The world DOES shift, knowing this sad news. I am going to start rereading soon, I think. I think I need to.

The problem I have these days, is that with the exception of younger awesome authors like yourself, my absolute favorites tend to be, well, old or dead -_-;;. I keep turning around and seeing another Great One dying and it rips another piece of my heart away.

But, still. To me, the universe shifted from the presence of her writing in the first place when she wrote. What I'm feeling now is a loss of that shift; a loss of a vital force of imagination and growth of the human spirit. It's drifting, now, that I'm feeling; wondering where the next push, the next light will come from.

I had managed to forget about that death, until it got brought up in one of the discussions about Ms. l'Engle. It hit like a brick, slamming me with a suddeness that seemed to leave it worse. We keep losing the good ones. :(

*mourns quietly*

I only read A Wrinkle In Time this year for my Fantasy Narratives class. I was supremely unimpressed. Probably because I'm no longer Meg, and I felt her handling of themes was sloppy. Reading the comments here has shown why the book is considered something of classic though.

Two in one week. *sigh* Who's next? They do come in threes, unless Bette Hagman counts, even though she died August 17th.

oh, that's sad! and i don't even have my own copy of A Wrinkle in Time and now i really want to read it!

A Wrinkle in Time and The Giver: Working together to define my childhood.

She never really wrote me, though there were parts of me in several characters. Some of me was Emily Gregory, and some of me was Vicki Austin, and some of me was Poly. But the really important books she wrote for me were her journals - the Crosswicks Quartet. I never wanted HER life, but she gave me to understand that one could compose a life. That was critical. I am very sad tonight.

She left a truly awesome legacy.

Having watched people suffer while trapped in their own bodies for years, I can say that I'm glad she's no longer hurting.

It's so long since I last read A Wrinkle in Time; I guess this is the right occasion for a reread (especially now that I have your wonderful take on braces!). I'm sorry that she had to endure so many years of illness; it must indeed have been a relief to be released from that body. May she rest well.

I still have my worn and battered first edition of A Ring of Endless Light which I've re-read every year since first discovering it on the back of a dusty library shelf in the seventh grade. Vicky Austin was such a relatable character with the same kind of teenage girl failings I knew I had. She was strong and intuitive, but also incredibly vulnerable to things like infatuation and resentment. Things I felt I knew already too well. What she did, however, was offer a bit of guidance and hope that even in the face of darkness, not all is given up and lost.

What seemed Madeleine L'Engle's greatest strength, however, was her ability to inject a feeling of spirituality and faith into science and physics while putting them into the perspective of our everyday human lives. In a way, you could see that to her, the stars and the cosmos and the way the universe works ARE a type of religion. A faith far above the petty callings of the state-sanctioned religions we most frequently cross. If it hadn't been for authors like her, I probably wouldn't be as spiritual AND scientific as I am today. She helped show how one doesn't necessarily negate the other.

I'm sad she died, but she lived a very long, whole life, and left a huge part of herself behind to live forever. :)

A Wrinkle in Time was the book that introduced me to fantasy, as far as I can remember. It started ideas in my head that have never really left, even though I never read another of her books. It was also the first one with twins in it... Rest in peace, Ms L'engle.

While the barbed-wire idea is appealing, speaking as someone who's in the middle of six years of braces, you were probably lucky in that respect.

Oh Goddess...

I am one of those people who has only read A Wrinkle in Time, and I only read it once, but it did indeed have quite an effect on me. I wanted to be Meg--what girl didn't? But more importantly, Ms. L'Engle gave me a new way of looking at the world and at fantasy fiction. I can trace the appeal of practically every sci-fi/fantasy book, movie, or comic that I love to the worldview Wrinkle presented.

So it goes.

I've read twenty or so of her books. My world shifted considerably when I read Kit's entry.

Damn, the world blows sometimes.

That's very sad news. I read quite a few of her books--unfortunately never liked any of them--but she was so important in the development of YA fiction, and especially fantasy, that I still feel it as a great loss.

A Wrinkle in Time is the one book I'd take on a desert island. It has never gotten old for me since the first time I read it. I met her in 1992 and got the book signed. I got that one and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Even at ALA's prices, I couldn't afford the trilogy. They were the best stories.

Yes. A Wrinkle in Time was such a *right* book for me, when I read it. It fitted itself into my brain in the way that formative books do, and the memory of reading it and *feeling* it feels like a segment of my childhood.

It’s sad when an author passes away, especially when it’s an author that has written a book so close to our hearts. L’Engle’s 'A Wrinkle in Time' is a book that has been read by many a teenager. It is the story of Meg and Charles Murry, along with Calvin, and their quest to find Mr.Murry. The three cross the boundaries of time and space and visit other planets in their search. An unusual story, indeed. One that keeps your interest ‘til the end. I had read the book as a young adult and re-read it recently with the help of Shmoop. The site helped me immensely to understand the points that I had overlooked as a youngster. In her death, L’Engle may have passed through time and space, but her book `A Wrinkle in Time’ will entertain generations to come.