A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle [69]
What do you value most in your friends?
Love.
What is your favorite song?
“Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.”
What time of the year do you like best?
I suppose autumn. I love the changing of the leaves. I love the autumn goldenrod, the Queen Anne’s lace.
What was the original title of A Wrinkle in Time?
“Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.”
How did you get the idea for A Wrinkle in Time?
We were living in the country with our three kids on this dairy farm. I started reading what Einstein wrote about time. And I used a lot of those principles to make a universe that was creative and yet believable.
How hard was it to get A A Wrinkle in Time published?
I was kept hanging for two years. Over and over again I received nothing more than the formal, printed rejection slip. Eventually, after twenty-six rejections, I called my agent and said, “Send it back. It’s too different. Nobody’s going to publish it.” He sent it back, but a few days later a friend of my mother’s insisted that I meet John Farrar, the publisher. He liked the manuscript, and eventually decided to publish it. My first editor was Hal Vursell.
Which of your characters is most like you?
None of them. They’re all wiser than I am.
NEWBERY MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
The Expanding Universe
August 1963
For a writer of fiction to have to sit down and write a speech, especially a speech in which she must try to express her gratitude for one of the greatest honors of her life, is as difficult a task as she can face. She can no longer hide behind the printed page and let her characters speak for her; she must stand up in front of an illustrious group of librarians, editors, publishers, writers, feeling naked, the way one sometimes does in a dream. What then, does she say? Should she merely tell a series of anecdotes about her life and how she happened to write this book? Or should she try to be profound and write a speech that will go down in the pages of history, comparable only to the Gettysburg Address? Should she stick to platitudes that will offend no one and say nothing? Perhaps she tries all of these several times and then tears them up, knowing that if she doesn’t, her husband will do it for her, and decides simply to say some of the things she feels deeply about.
I can’t tell you anything about children’s books that you don’t already know. I’m not teaching you; you’re teaching me. All I can tell you is how Ruth Gagliardo’s telephone call about the Newbery Medal has affected me over the past few years.
One of my greatest treasures is the letter Mr. Melcher wrote me, one of the last letters he wrote, talking about the medal and saying he had just read A Wrinkle in Time and had been excited about it. This was one of the qualities that made him what he was: the ability to be excited. Bertha Mahony Miller, in her article “Frederic G. Melcher—A Twentieth Century John Newbery,” says that “The bookstore’s stock trade is . . . explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly. . . .” I like here to think of another Fred, the eminent British scientist Fred Hoyle, and his theory of the universe, in which matter is continuously being created, with the universe expanding but not dissipating. As island galaxies rush away from each other into eternity, new clouds of gas are condensing into new galaxies. As old stars die, new stars are being born. Mr. Melcher lived in this universe of continuous creation and expansion. It would be impossible to overestimate his influence on books, particularly children’s books; impossible to overestimate his influence on the people who read books, write them, get enthusiastic about them. We are all here tonight because of his vision, and we would be less than fair to his memory if we didn’t resolve to keep alive his excitement and his ability to grow, to change, to expand.
I am of the first generation