Angieville

I am feeling many things, guys, after watching this teaser trailer. I am feeling a complicated number of things. So I require your thoughts. Have you watched it? How many times? What are you feeling? The majority of the reactions I'm seeing seem to be overwhelmingly positive. Like, fawningly so. I'm cautiously optimistic. Just blown away by some things (I love Meg, and all three of the Mrs. W's look amazing ) and a bit befuddled by others (is that really supposed to be Calvin?? the "chosen one" dialogue feels laid on a bit thick for me). And so I need your input. Please.

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted here @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, and under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! Goodness, I love old covers. What I wouldn't give to own that glorious, garish killer unicorn cover in the middle. It must be the original. I happen to own the cover on the left, with the boy and girl talking on a New York City park bench. I love it so. And it probably gets to the heart of the book best of each of these. But I adore the Square Fish reissue because it features the cathedral, and I long to have the entire Austin Family Chronicles in those editions as well. I gifted them to my niece not long back, and they are as lovely in person as they are on the screen. So. I am a longtime Madeleine L'Engle devotee. It started back when I was 10 with A Wrinkle in Time and it has stretched out over the y...

R etro Friday   is a weekly meme hosted here at Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, an under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! I include roundups from participating bloggers in my post every week. I think this may have been the last Madeleine L'Engle book I read (for the first time) as a teenager. And for some reason it holds a sort of distinction in my head because of that fact. I, like most other readers I know who love her books, got in on the whole thing with A Wrinkle in Time , moving on to the other Murry and O'Keefe family books and then the Austin family series and so on from there. I must have been somewhere around ten or so when I first read the Time series and by the time I got through all the others and worked my way around to her standalones I was a bit older. Although one of my very favorite things about her body of ...

This evening I've got several interesting links for you. First off, Liz over at A Chair, A Fireplace & a Tea Cozy has the scoop on two new Madeleine L'Engle reissues and the covers are so lovely that I have to post them here as well. Aren't they sigh-worthy? I just love them. And since And Both Were Young is one of my favorites of her lesser-known works, I will definitely be picking up a copy. I hope these new editions and covers help both books find a new and receptive readership. They deserve it. Second, Chelle over at Tempting Persephone has started up a new weekly feature that I think is awesome. She calls it "I    ♥ This Art" and has this to say: I ♥ This Art is a weekly feature on Tempting Persephone. Art, no matter the medium, buoys my spirit up. Each week I’ll spotlight a piece that speaks to me, makes me want to know more, or just makes me feel. The first spotlight she has up, " A Boy and a Girl ," is so lovely. I've already be...

It can't be just me, right? These reissues Square Fish has done of Madeleine L'Engle's Austin Family Chronicles are simply beautiful. Enough so that I'm actually pretty impressed at my unusual display of self control at not having purchased them the day they came out! I love the title font, the simple, solid colors, and the detail of the window box art on each one. I love this series and have done so for a long time now. My copies of The Young Unicorns and A Ring of Endless Light are extremely worn well-loved from having been read so many times. I love the way the siblings grow up and change and love each other across the arc of this five-book series. I love emotional Vicky and precocious Rob, tragic Zachary and grey-eyed Adam. And the music. The way the Austins love and play and appreciate music. They are happy books for me. Are there series you love so much and over such a period of time that they're reissuing them? And do you find yourself with the urge to o...

A couple of days ago Kmont over at Lurv a la Mode posed the question: What's with all the crappy parenting in YA novels? I had to smile when I read her thought-provoking post as it's an old, familiar trope of young adult literature--remove the parental units and BANG! You've got free reign. It makes sense to a certain degree, right? In the absence of authority figures and/or the adults in the teen's life most likely to object to all manner of shenanigans, your protagonist can get up to scads of mischief, thus providing the crisis/plot/problem what have you. Better yet, kill off or mysteriously disappear one parent and you've got some juicy material for teen angst and conflict. This is an old trope stretching back to when orphans were prime protagonists in young people's literature and I do think things have changed over the years. But it does seem to still hold true in a large section of YA fantasy novels, since a kind, involved, non-self absorbed set of paren...

Must they all go at once? First Lloyd Alexander and now Madeleine L'Engle. Don't they know I can only take so many childhood heroes departing at a time? I came across A Wrinkle in Time shortly after reading the Chronicles of Prydain and I still remember how smooth the pages were. And how much I dug Meg. She was my age. She was smart and awkward, angry and strong. And she never gave up. She held on to her family and those who became family like Calvin and Dr. Colubra. And when I read Mrs. Whatsit's line, "By the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract," I just couldn't put it down. I had no idea what a tesseract was or why the sound of it sent a chill down my spine. I didn't care. I just had to keep reading. I read my way through A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet and then I read all the Austin family books. The Young Unicorns is still one of my very favorites, chilling and beautiful as so many of hers are. Like Lloyd Alexander's b...