Product Description

Noted writer Madeleine L'Engle and her photographer daughter, Maria Rooney, team up to provide a tender verbal and graphic portrait of the bond between mothers and daughters from all walks of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #897908 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-07
• Released on: 2000-03-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

From the Inside Flap
The award-winning author of A Wrinkle in Time and her photographer daughter, Maria Rooney, have joined to create a loving tribute and celebration of the most unique relationship: mothers and daughters. Wonderful black and white photography of mothers and daughters from all races, and the words by L'Engle, make this a very special gift to both give and receive.

About the Author
Madeleine L'Engle is the author of more than forty-five books for all ages, among them the beloved A Wrinkle in Time, awarded the Newbery Medal; A Ring of Endless Light, a Newbery Honor Book; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, winner of the American Book Award; and the Austin family series of which Troubling a Star is the fifth book. L'Engle was named the 1998 recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards award, honoring her lifetime contribution in writing for teens.


Ms. L'Engle was born in 1918 in New York City, late in her parents' lives, an only child growing up in an adult world. Her father was a journalist who had been a foreign correspondent, and although he suffered from mustard gas poisoning in World War I, his work still took him abroad a great deal. Her mother was a musician; the house was filled with her parents' friends: artists, writers, and musicians. "Their lives were very full and they didn't really have time for a child," she says. "So I turned to writing to amuse myself."


When she was 12, Ms. L'Engle moved with her family to the French Alps in search of purer air for her father's lungs. She was sent to an English boarding school --"dreadful," she says. When she was 14, her family returned to America and she went to boarding school once again, Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina--which she loved. When she was 17, her father died.


Ms. L'Engle spent the next four years at Smith College. After graduating cum laude, she and an assortment of friends moved to an apartment in Greenwich Village. "I still wanted to be a writer; I always wanted to be a writer, but I had to pay the bills, so I went to work in the theater," she says.


Touring as an actress seems to have been a catalyst for her. She wrote her first book, The Small Rain, while touring with Eva Le Gallienne in Uncle Harry. She met Hugh Franklin, to whom she was married until his death in 1986, while they were rehearsing The Cherry Orchard, and they were married on tour during a run of The Joyous Season, starring Ethel Barrymore.


Ms. L'Engle retired from the stage after her marriage, and the Franklins moved to northwest Connecticut and opened a general store. "The surrounding area was real dairy farmland then, and very rural. Some of the children had never seen books when they began their first year of school," she remembers. The Franklins raised three children--Josephine, Maria, and Bion. Ms. L'Engle's first book in the Austin quintet, Meet the Austins, an ALA Notable Children's Book, has strong parallels with her life in the country. But she says, "I identify with Vicky rather than with Mrs. Austin, since I share all of Vicky's insecurities, enthusiasms, and times of sadness and growth."


When, after a decade in Connecticut, the family returned to New York, Ms. L'Engle rejoiced. "In some ways, I was back in the real world." Mr. Franklin resumed acting, and became well known as Dr. Charles Tyler in the television series All My Children. Two-Part Invention is Ms. L'Engle's touching and critically acclaimed story of their long and loving marriage.


The Time quintet--A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time--are among her most famous books, but it took years to get a publisher to accept A Wrinkle in Time. "Every major publisher turned it down. No one knew what to do with it," she says. When Farrar, Straus & Giroux finally accepted the manuscript, she insisted that they publish it as a children's book. It was the beginning of their children's list."


Today, Ms. L'Engle lives in New York City and Connecticut, writing at home and at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where she is variously the librarian and the writer-in-residence. "It depends from day-to-day on what they want to call me. I do keep the library collection--largely theology, philosophy, a lot of good reference books--open on a volunteer basis."

Customer Reviews

This book is incredible!
I couldn't get through more than 2 pages of this book at a time, because my eyes kept swelling with tears. I purchased this book as a gift for my adult daughter, and hope that she passes it on to hers someday.

FROM A MOTHER'S HEART TO HER DAUGHTER'S SOUL
A POSITIVE WAY TO SHARE A FEW CHARISHED LOVING MOMENTS WITH YOUR MOM/DAUGHTER IN OUR BUSY WORLD. THE PHOTOGRAPHS WILL TOUCH ALL MOTHERS HEART'S AND THE TEXT WILL EXPLAIN TO A DAUGHER'S HEART THE FEELING WORDS CAN NOT DO JUSTICE FOR. IT SHOWS AND TELLS THE DEPTH OF LOVE THAT PARENTS FEEL FOR THEIR DAUGHTERS, BUT FOCUSES ON THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MOTHHERS AND DAUTHERS. THIS ALSO MAKES A BEAUTIFUL GIFT OF THE HEART TO PASS ON TO THE NEXT GENERATION.