In Memoriam: Madeleine L'Engle Camp, 1918-2007

[thatcrazycajun]

With thanks to catalana for the news: Madeleine L'Engle, author of many books for young adults including the famous A Wrinkle in Time series, has died in her Connecticut home at 89 after a long illness; see story here. That book was a key point in my becoming a fan of science fiction and fantasy, as I suspect it was for many others in fandom; although the sequels did not quite grab me as readily, the first book was enough to make her rep and win her a slew of kid-lit awards, including the Newbery and National Humanities Medals. ABC's Wonderful World of Disney made a movie of it a couple years ago (with Whoopi Goldberg in the pivotal role of Mrs. Whatsit) that didn't suck.

Were her books important to you, too, growing up? Or if not, which ones were? Please post recollections here. My own memories of curling up in a library nook involve, in addition to Wrinkle, the Heinlein juveniles, Don Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown mini-mystery collections (just reprinted in a snazzy new paperback set) and the Danny Dunn series, featuring a teenage trio and their college-professor mentor who explored all sorts of then-current and projected technology (anti-gravity paint, undersea agriculture, roboticized houses, and even the SETI program).

Comments

[mdlbear]

AWiT came out in 1962, at which point I was in high school. My SF addiction was already well-established at that point, having started with Andre Norton's "The Stars Are Ours" a good many years earlier. Besides Norton my favorite authors were Heinlein ("Rocket Ship Galileo" was an early favorite), Asimov, and Clarke.