I’ve always enjoyed seeing my favorite novels (or even pieces of them) portrayed in a visual medium. Normally that would be in movies or on television, but cover art, fan art, and other portrayals are also great for experiencing other people’s conception of the characters and places in the stories you love. I find it interesting to see how other people imagine things differently than I do, especially on the occasions when I am surprised by something that I actually like better than the way I imagined it. And while I knew I would probably not adopt Hope Larson’s depictions of Charles Wallace, Calvin, and Meg as my own, I couldn’t wait to see what she had done with one of my favorite books from childhood in A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel.

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It's been getting some great buzz and our excerpt looked lovely, and we know you've been dying to get your hands on it — so here they are! Five copies of the Wrinkle in Time graphic novel! Don't miss out on your chance to win by commenting below!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, comment on this post beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) September 17, 2012. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET September 21, 2012. Void outside of the 50 US and DC and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Macmillan Publishers, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

In 2008, after the death of Madeleine L’Engle, her granddaughters agreed to publish The Joys of Love, an early novel that had been rejected by several publishers. For whatever reason, L’Engle never made use of her status as a published author to print it later in her life. It’s a pity. The Joys of Love, written in the late 1940s, may not rank among L’Engle’s best, or offer the profound statements of her later books, but it is a happy, light and enjoyable read.

[Infighting and love in the summer theatre.]

A Winter’s Love, a serious study of marriage, love and family, is one of Madeleine L’Engle’s early adult novels, published in 1957 before she began writing any of the young adult novels that would make her famous. A commentator on an earlier post had suggested I include it in this reread, and I couldn’t think why not. Now that I’ve read it, I can answer that: it’s kinda depressing. But interesting, and definitely worth a look for L’Engle fans. Just keep some chocolate on hand.

[Infidelity, anti-Semitism, tuberculosis, gossip, and glorious romantic walks in the Alps.]

In 1994, Madeleine L’Engle turned to Vicky Austin again to write the last book in her Austin series, Troubling a Star. The last in the Austin series, it is an odd coda, featuring a Vicky somehow younger and more naïve than in her last appearance, involved in an international adventure of espionage that threatens the most remote continent on Earth – Antarctica. And although it is ostensibly a sequel to A Ring of Endless Light, it is also a sequel to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which creates many of its problems.

[Major spoilers for this book, A Ring of Endless Light, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet.]

An Acceptable Time joins two of L’Engle’s young adult series together, as Polly O’Keefe from the O’Keefe novels travels to Connecticut and the house where Meg, Calvin, Charles Wallace, Sandy and Dennys began their adventures through time and space. Something must be up with that house, for beyond all of the other weird things that have happened nearby, shortly after Polly arrives she finds herself stepping through 3000 years of time.

Unfortunately, she also brings Zachary Grey along with her.

[When time travelling creates linguistic issues.]

After years of relegating them to mere supporting characters, L’Engle finally gave Sandy and Dennys, the Murry twins their own adventure in Many Waters. The book turned out, however, to be quite different than any of the other works in the Murry/O’Keefe books. If L’Engle pushed the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy before, here she tried something else entirely: Biblical fantasy, if you like, complete with unicorns. Drawing from her own earlier work with time travel and a few verses from Genesis, it tries to retell the story of Noah and the flood. I say tries, because to be honest, I really don’t think it works at all.

The odd thing is that I think it might work just fine if Sandy and Dennys weren’t in it.

[I’m assuming everyone knows what happened with Noah and the flood, right? But some spoilers for the story of Sandy and Dennys.]

Before I go on to discuss this week’s book, A House Like a Lotus, a quick point about the Madeleine L’Engle reread in regards to racism, homophobia and other issues.

If I have seemed harsh on L’Engle on these matters — and I may well have been — it’s because I am talking about Madeleine L’Engle, a writer who in her earlier books was arguing for inclusivity, tolerance and the careful use of language to describe minority groups, and an author who, as others have mentioned, was renowned for expanding the horizons of young readers. I am not particularly surprised when an Edith Nesbit, who was completely unconcerned with racial equality, drops a stereotypical image or uses the n-word in her books.

[Expectations of L’Engle, and A House Like a Lotus reread.]

“I don’t wish to be defined by gender or genitals. I am a pianist.”

— Katherine Vigneras

Having written novels focused on the emotional angst of young and middle aged adults, in the 1980s Madeleine L’Engle set off to write something a little different: A Severed Wasp, the novel of an elderly woman coming to terms with her life. Set mostly in New York City, but with multiple flashbacks to Europe, the novel also functions as a little mini reunion of L’Engle characters, featuring Suzy Austin from the Austin novels; Dave Davidson from The Young Unicorns, and Mimi Oppenheimer from A Winter’s Love. (Philippa Hunter from And Both Were Young also gets a mention.) It is a novel of human pain, and our reactions to it, and how we might be able to survive.

And, despite its focus on a Manhattan cathedral, it does not quite provide the answer you might expect from L’Engle.

[Nazis, castration, and gay sex in Manhattan. This is what happens when you marry someone working in soap operas, guys. Very spoilery post]

If I said A Wrinkle in Time was the first book my mother read to me out loud, I would be a lying. There would have been the Maurice Sendaks, the Dr. Seusses, the early Chris Van Alsburgs, not to mention the awfully written Transformers and Masters of the Universe “storybooks.” But none of experiences are even as remotely memorable as when mom read A Wrinkle in Time to me over the course of several weeks. It’s the first book I truly remember having read to me. And through the power of a tesseract, I remember it being all happening in one darky, stormy night.

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For the 50th anniversary of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (excerpt over here!), we have  very special sweepstakes: first, we have four copies of the 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition of A Wrinkle in Time. This gorgeous hardcover copy contains an updated version of the original cover on the book jacket, with the original cover underneath on the hardcover itself. In addition to the book, you’ll receive a Wrinkle in Time tote bag, like the ones we gave away here! Enter below in the comments and you might win!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, fill out entry on this post beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) February 13, 2012. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET February 16, 2012. Void outside of the 50 US and DC and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Macmillan Publishers, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

A Ring of Endless Light, the fourth novel in Madeleine L’Engle’s Austin famly series, opens, appropriately enough, with a funeral. I say appropriately, because this is a novel of death, and our responses to it. And also, telepathic dolphins. It is one of her best books.

[And also, one of her best romances. Spoilers for the end.]

Perhaps dissatisfied with the novels she had written about the children of Meg and Calvin O’Keefe, in 1978 L’Engle again turned to the Murry family for another novel featuring dazzling trips through time and space, this time on the back of a unicorn. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is simultaneously one of L’Engle’s most beautiful and poetic novels, filled with joy and despair, and also one of her most frustrating, a book that both celebrates her earlier books while completely contradicting some of their most important and fiercely argued ethical points. I find myself dazzled and irritated.

[Warning: one of my longer and more ranty posts ahead, with major spoilers for the entire book.]

Dragons in the Waters, the second book in the O’Keefe family series, is, like its predecessor, a tale of suspense, intrigue and murder mingled with a touch of fantasy and science fiction, as Poly and Charles O’Keefe meet the 13-year-old Simon Renier on a freighter trip down to Venezuela and a lake there, named for dragons. Poly and Charles are travelling with their father who plans to examine potential environmental issues with drilling oil in the lake. Simon is travelling with Forsyth Phair, a considerably older cousin he has known for precisely one month, because his elderly aunt Leonis believes that Simon needs some culture and exposure to the world beyond their little North Carolina house. Forsyth is returning a portrait of Simon Bolivar to the Venezuelan government, in the first and last kindly thing he will do in the entire novel.

[When murder becomes an almost forgotten sideplot.  Also, no dragons.]

Some years after writing The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L’Engle decided to write a more direct sequel to her visionary novel, A Wrinkle in Time. Set about a year after the previous adventure, A Wind in the Door is both a larger and smaller book than its predecessor. Larger, because among its themes is the destruction of stars and galaxies, vanished with a terrifying scream; smaller, because a significant part of its storyline focuses on and takes place within a mitochondrion within a human cell. It begins with a quiet conversation about something that might, or might not be, dragons, and ends with a dazzling poetic sequence, a sign of L’Engle’s confidence in her writing powers.

As in the first book, the main protagonist is Meg Murry, still angry and impatient, still inclined to do more than her share of “Why do I have to do this?” but otherwise, thankfully less whiny and better adjusted than in the last book. This is partly thanks to her stronger relationship with Calvin O’Keefe, which has made life easier for her in school and in other ways, and partly, I’d like to think, because of the events of the last book. I have to imagine that, since, oddly enough, aside from two offhand mentions, nobody makes any reference to the previous book at all.

[Which is probably ok because they have dying shrieking stars and dragons to worry about anyway.]

Technically, The Young Unicorns is the third book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Austin series. But in it, the Austins take a decidedly supporting role, and Vicky’s first person narration has been replaced with a third person narrative that flits from one person to the next, allowing L’Engle to show aspects of the story that Vicky could not possibly have known — along with sparing us some of Vicky’s teenage angst. (It’s still there, but confined to just a few pages.) And, perhaps because L’Engle decided that the Austins needed a bit of fun and intrigue, The Young Unicorns abandons the warm coming of age family story for mystery, intrigue, rich ethical debates and a touch of science fiction. It also deals with many of the same ethical issues raised by The Arm of the Starfish — although considerably less problematically.

Thus, in many ways, it “feels” more like one of the O’Keefe books than one of the Austin books — a feeling only strengthened by the presence of characters from the O’Keefe books. But I have to say, I enjoyed it considerably more than the O’Keefe books.

[Abandoned subway stations, laser lobotomies, and a genie: just another day in Manhattan]