A Wrinkle in Time helps inspire winner of 2010 Newbery Medal
Madeleine L’Engle’s classic children’s book A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery medal in 1963. In 2010 the Newbery medal has been won by Rebecca Stead for When You Reach Me, a novel within which L’Engle’s novel plays a major part.
About When You Reach Me:
Four mysterious letters change Miranda’s world forever. By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighbourhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner. But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for an emergency is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favours. First, you must write me a letter.
Rebecca Stead said that although she loved A Wrinkle in Time as a child, she hadn’t originally intended to include it in her own prize-winning novel.
"It started out as a small detail in Miranda’s story, a sort of talisman, and one I thought I would eventually jettison, because you can’t just toss A Wrinkle in Time in there casually. But as my story went deeper, I saw that I didn’t want to let the book go. I talked about it with my editor, Wendy Lamb, and to others close to the story. And what we decided was that if we were going to bring L’Engle’s story in, we needed to make the book’s relationship to Miranda’s story stronger. So I went back to A Wrinkle in Time and read it again and again, trying to see it as different characters in my own story might." (Amazon.com)
About A Wrinkle in Time
When Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a ‘wrinkle in time’ for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as ‘It’. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a very special and exciting mixture of fantasy and science fiction, which all the way through is dominated by the funny and mysterious trio of guardian angels known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.
About The Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children’s book published the previous year. On June 22, 1921, Frederic G. Melcher proposed the award to the American Library Association meeting of the Children’s Librarians’ Section and suggested that it be named for the eighteenth-century English bookseller John Newbery. The Newbery Award thus became the first children’s book award in the world. Its terms, as well as its long history, continue to make it the best known and most discussed children’s book award in this country.
Fantasy Book Review will be reading and reviewing both When You Reach Me and A Wrinkle in Time in March of this year.
Sources: The Guardian & Amazon.com
Posted: February 3rd, 2010
Author: Lee
Categories: Latest News
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