Madeline L'Engle Books

My son loves to read the C.S. Lewis and Tolkien series, and I knew he'd like Madeline L'Engle's books. I've been suggesting the book, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle to my son for the last two years, and last month he said he'd try it. He read through it in two days, and then asked for more! We went back to the library and got all five books:

A Wrinkle in Time
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters
An Acceptable Time

Today he got a $20.00 check in the mail from his grandfather to purchase the set. The boxed set, The Wrinkle in Time Quintet Boxed Set (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, An Acceptable Time) was only $21.00(new) at Amazon from a Marketplace seller. He likes to read books over and over, so this set will be well used.

And there is more! I didn't read past the first series as a child. In fact, only the first two books had been published in the mid-1970's when I was reading her books. See here for the complete list of her book series, and a biographical sketch. My son doesn't know about these yet, but I've got them on hold at the library:

Second-generation (O'Keefe) after the Time Quartet:

• The Arm of the Starfish (1965)
• Dragons in the Waters (1976)
• A House Like a Lotus (1984)
• An Acceptable Time (1989)
  

While I was searching for the set, I came upon some of her adult books. I didn't know that she was a Christian, and much like C.S. Lewis, wrote through her faith. One book in particular looked interesting, and unfortunately our library does not carry this one, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton Literary Series):

Amazon.com Review
Walking on Water collects 12 brief meditations by Madeleine L'Engle on the nature of art and its relation to faith. L'Engle, the beloved author of A Wrinkle In Time among others, has written and spoken widely and wisely about the connection between religion and art. The gist of her understanding is as follows:

To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. It is what makes me respond to the death of an apple tree, the birth of a puppy, northern lights shaking the sky, by writing stories.

She believes that "[b]asically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.'" And "incarnation," in L'Engle's view, means "God's revelation of himself through particularity." In this book there is some slippage between L'Engle's autobiographical and critical voices. As a result, she often claims Christian significance for works whose meaning is not intentionally Christian. She admits this freely:

[B]ecause I am a struggling Christian, it's inevitable that I superimpose my awareness of all that happened in the life of Jesus upon what I'm reading, upon Buber, upon Plato, upon the Book of Daniel. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing. To be truly Christian means to see Christ everywhere, to know him as all in all.

-- Michael Joseph Gross

Not a bad thing at all. I may have to purchase this book.

Our library did have The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth and I've requested this one.


Product Description from Amazon.com:

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes… –Madeleine L’Engle, from The Rock That Is Higher

Story captures our hearts and feeds our imaginations. It reminds us who we are and where we came from. Story gives meaning and direction to our lives as we learn to see it as an affirmation of God’s love and truth–an acknowledgment of our longing for a rock in the midst of life’s wilderness.

Drawing upon her own experiences, well-known tales in literature, and selected narratives from Scripture, Madeleine L’Engle gently leads the way into the glorious world of story in The Rock That Is Higher. Here she acknowledges universal human longings and considers how literature, Scripture, personal stories, and life experiences all point us toward our true home.