Time

[collisionwork]

Madeleine L'Engle has passed away.

I haven't read any of her books in about 20 years, but for the 10 years before that, I read whatever I could get my hands on, including the classic A Wrinkle in Time which I read many many times (I identified with Charles Wallace a bit much, I think). Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever actually owned any of her books - I recall always having them from school or public libraries. Looking over her work now, it appears I read only a tiny fraction of her published work.

I was pleased and honored to have met and spoken to Ms. L'Engle briefly in 1987 (CORRECTION: 1984) and had dinner with her at her home in 1991 as result of being a classmate and later a friend of her granddaughter, Charlotte.

Recently, Berit and I had a mildly heated discussion with some friends regarding the Harry Potter books - which B & I both enjoy somewhat, but feel are just a bit overrated - I do feel they've gotten much better as they went along, and Rowling's writing skills caught up more to her imagination. However, B & I were making the point that yes, these books are enjoyable for adults to read, but they are still children's books, no matter how dark they may be. This is not a pejorative statement, I think, but just the way it is, but it was taken as a putdown by the people we were talking to, and we were challenged to name other children's books as deep and rich as the Potters.

Well, just thinking of the ones I still keep on my bookshelf and occasionally pick up and read for pleasure, I was able to name Roald Dahl's wonderful books, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (aka Julie Andrews), Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and (especially for my money) the Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper (I enjoyed the Philip Pullman books the one time I read them, but I need to spend more time with them to see if I'd put them up there, too).

Once upon a time I would have included the Narnia books as well, but I reread them a couple of years ago in writing about them for the UGO.com Narnia hub, and discovered (having not touched them in almost 30 years) that they are definitely written for children (and written down to them, annoyingly) and not all that well. Very annoying books now. The other ones I've mentioned all hold up for me as an adult, not Mr. Lewis' annoying allegory. Ugh.

I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have included The Time Quartet. I think I'll check them out again - I may never have owned them, but Berit does, and they're on our shelves now. I have a tiny fear that they'll wind up closer to Lewis rather than Dahl or Cooper or Rowling, but only tiny.

And if you think that children's books that could be read with pleasure by adults (and which show that "children's books" should not be thought of a a negative term) began with Rowling, take a look at L'Engle.

Comments

Children's books for adults

[(Anonymous)]

I have read Madeleine L'Engle's books for years, but I remember them as truly wonderful classics. And I suspect, like most of my favorite children's books, they would feel that way to me today.

As a writer of children's books and writer/director of children's theater at times, it gets me so annoyed when people who have only read Harry Potter recently assume that it is the only set of children's books that cross the adult/child border. What foolishness, to assume that since Harry Potter happens to have found a modern popularity among adults, that other's children's books wouldn't be enjoyed by adults. This assumption is usually made by people who haven't tried to read any children's books since they were, well, children.

There are some writers who talk down to children, of course. It once was true that almost all "children's books" wrote down to children. That changed, but not recently with Harry Potter. That changed with the Alice books in the 19th century, which I consider my favorite books of all time, whether classified as books for children or adults.

But the greatest books never talk down. I haven't reread Narnia, so I can't comment on that. I have reread Oz books, of course, and though those are pure fantasy, what makes them particularly enjoyable to reread is that they continue in the Alice tradition by respecting the child reader.

Sometimes the way the books address death has been quoted as a reason for their adultness. But all sorts of children's books and stories address death, from Grimm's to Lloyd Alexander's (who recently passed away himself)

I share your opinion of Harry Potter by the way. They did get much better as they went along. The first book, actually, in my opinion, suffered from sloppy plotting and writing, and it seemed to me as if there was a decision that children might not fully notice.

That problem was cured as the books went along. But as Ionesco proved, even Tales for Children Under Three Years Old can be very appealing to adults at times.

[(Anonymous)]

In 5th grade, my teacher had a very intense (and, bizarrely, competitive) reading program, wherein there was a point system based on the difficulty of the book being read. It was a five point system where something like a collection of Heathcliff comics was one point, and Dickens was five. Mme. L'Engle's books were four-pointers, so you could read her, keep your nerd cred, and not have to worry about your head exploding. Or so we thought . . .

Toward the end of the year, we all did group projects. The book my group picked was A Wrinkle In Time, and our fiercest rivals were the Narnia kids. It was some Yankees-Red Sox shit. One day during recess, one of the Narnia kids came up to taunt us. He was this blond-haired kid who everyone thought was perfect; as far as the teachers were concerned, this kid walked on water, but he was a brutal little bastard. He comes up to me and says, "Why did you pick the Wrinkle of Time [sic]? You stupid. Narnia is the best." And me being me, I said "Fuck you," and punched him. Chaos ensued. When we were explaining ourselves to the principal, I defended myself by saying, "He insulted Madeleine L'Engle." My principal told me later (the next time I fucked up) that the only reason I had escaped suspension was that he couldn't bring himself to suspend a student who was willing to fight over literature. At the age of 10, no less.

I don't know how those books would hold up now. I'm a little nervous about re-reading them and damaging what they meant to me at that time. I'll stick with Harry Potter for now, and respectfully disagree about their overratedness.


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[silverplate88.livejournal.com]

http://www.booksattransworld.co.uk/thebookthief/

The Book Thief was published both in a teenage edition and in an adult one, it's at this link in case you haven't run across it.

This struck me as being relevant to your discussion re books for youth v. books for adults. The author is Australian, Markus Zusak, and from a Holocaust family.

It's very dark and very fascinating, maybe a limited-release art movie someday?