Madeleine L’Engle: Author of “A Wrinkle in Time”

Gonzales addresses her audience in a style and tone that are easily accessible and clearly up to the job of presenting a well-known author who has some fairly complex philosophical ideas and an unusual, although not iconoclastic, lifestyle. L’Engle comes across as a woman with an abiding commitment to her family as well as a lifelong lust for learning and the more spiritual aspects of existence. There are a couple of awkward phrasings and a few places where unexplained questions persist. Some of the book’s success is due to the author’s direct contact with her subject; Gonzales has obviously interviewed her extensively. The bibliography is modest enough to entice rather than threaten reluctant younger readers and yet comprehensive enough to suggest to more scholarly readers that Gonzales has done her homework. While she is admiring and discreet, she has not sheltered or distorted the facts; even L’Engle’s irritability in the morning hours comes through. The one shortfall of the book is the poor quality of some of the black-and-white photographs. Still, their informality and their unique, if somewhat second-rate photographic technique, give a sense of history to one of the great women in children’s literature. –Ruth K. MacDonald, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN