At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place between myself and the powers of darkness!
From Publishers Weekly
Author Madeleine L’Engle died last night in Connecticut, at the age of 89. Best known for her 1963 Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, L’Engle was the author of more than 60 books for adults and young readers.
Also:
NY Times Obit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L’Engle
This makes my heart hurt.
I’d really like to re-read the trilogy this weekend.
Et in arcaedia, ego. 
That is heartbreaking. A Wrinkle in Time was a formative book for me.
-Chris
I’d like to, too, but I don’t *own* them. Dammit.
Oh, no. 😦
A Wrinkle In Time is hands-down my favorite book ever. I lost count of how many times I’ve read it, but it’s in the dozens.
One of my most cherished possessions is the dog-eared copy of the Dell Yearling edition of that book I’ve had since I was, oh, 7 or 8… signed “To Meredith, Ananda, Madeleine L’Engle”. The cover was already mostly off it at that point, so apparently her comment was “this looks like it’s been much loved”. Indeed.
What a lovely thing to have. I have the same editions myself of the first three books and they were also much-loved and much-read, even though I was very careful with my precious books.
So sad. We lost her and Lloyd Alexander in the same year.:-(
That one hurt too. I must have read the Prydain books so many times. The characters (esp. Fflewddur Fflam) were so familiar.
Yeah. The feeling is something like…a piece of your childhood world breaks off the continent and drifts off to sea, never to be seen again.
Damn.
Ouch.
Just ouch.
She was my tour guide to my first summer as a teenager.
Thank you for the hymn/poem. It’s always been one of my favorites, and one of the reasons I love A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET so much. =)
And that is my favorite book by her (with THE YOUNG UNICORNS second). It’s a sad day.
There are four books in that trilogy now, all good stuff. She will be missed.
Oh. I’ve already lamented her loss, as one of my favorite writers of all time. But seeing that poem again, which I STILL have memorized from when I was a child…oh.
Tears are in my eyes again now. {sniff}