by Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy
If you have a Dialectic student who is reading A Wrinkle in Time—or just a kiddo who is a fan of the author—this charming biography is the perfect Tandem Read. Not only did the author Madeleine L’Engle have an interesting childhood, she had a lot to teach young people about focusing on the positive and never giving up. This biography, written by L’Engle’s granddaughters, shares the grandmother they knew and the gentle lessons that she taught them.
This book, which utilizes photos, documents, and journal entries, paints a portrait of an upper middle class American family from shortly before World War I until 1962, when A Wrinkle in Time was published. Madeleine L’Engle’s childhood, however, was not typical. Her family crossed back and forth from Europe to the United States, and the author spent a good deal of time in boarding schools. A picture emerges of a lonely young girl who lived in her imagination, encouraged by her writer father to put down on paper the poems and stories that her situation brought out. It is easy to trace L’Engle’s path from this child, to the writer, to the grandmother the biography’s authors knew and loved.
The authors were very influenced by their grandmother, and they clearly show Madeleine’s trials: loneliness, financial troubles, and countless publishers’ rejections, while ultimately focusing on L’Engle’s triumphs: her perseverance as an author and the impact she had on her family and her readers. What emerges is a portrait of a gentle, positive, and strong soul who not only grew to be a wonderful writer of children’s literature but a stellar example to her fans as well.
My greatest takeaway from this book isn’t necessarily the arc of the story of L’Engle’s life. It is instead the single thread that surfaces repeatedly throughout the biography: that Madeleine L’Engle never once doubted that she was born to be a writer. No matter what life threw her way, no matter how much rejection she faced, she provides a steadfast example of someone who never gave up because she never questioned if she was on the correct path in life or what her end goal was. For me, this is the biggest message that this biography has for the youth who read it.
Recommendation: This is a perfect Dialectic level biography about an author they can relate to. It could also be read by Rhetoric students, but most would find the prose to be a bit simplistic.
Nonfiction (biography)
162 pages
Published: 2018
by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers; New York
Subject: Author biography—Madeleine L’Engle
Tandem Read: A Wrinkle in Time
Time period: early to mid 20th century
Recommended for: Dialectic students
A teacher's guide is available from the publisher for A Wrinkle in Time and for Becoming Madeleine. You can access it here.
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