“A
book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my
ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what
it tells me and collaborate.” – Madeleine L'Engle
Born on this date in 1918, L’Engle is
best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A
Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door and the National
Book Award-winning A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
Her works reflect both her faith and her interest in science.
L'Engle wrote her first story at age
5 and began keeping a journal at age 8, but despite writing frequently, she had
little financial success and decided to give up writing as a career at age
40. But her family encouraged her to
keep going and she penned A Wrinkle in
Time while on a family camping excursion.
The book was rejected 30 times before publisher John Farrar decided to
give it a chance, and the rest, as old the saying goes . . .
Once she made her breakthrough,
L’Engle wrote 
dozens of successful books for children and adults and earned
multiple writing awards. In 1998, she
received the annual Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library
Association recognizing her body of work "for its significant and lasting
contribution to young adult literature.”
“We can't take any credit for our
talents,” L’Engle, who died in 2007, said.
“It's how we use them that counts.”
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