School Week: Super Fun

Madeleine L'Engle died. She was 88, and hasn't written anything for a few years, and she had already logged about 60 books, so no one can say she didn't do her part while she was here. But there's something awe-inspiring to pull a Kubrick or a Puzo or a Heller or a Schultz (who all died within a few months of each other, around 1999-2000, if I remember) and get one last opus out before going to walk the purple valley. (As my journalism professor told me never to ever say in print, or he'd horsewhip me. You think I kid. You have no met Dr. Bob Cole, nor seen his reach. )

L'Engle is best known for the Time books -- A Wrinkle in Time and so on. If you haven't read them since you were 13 and a girl, they somehow work as metaphysical sci-fi and as plain old coming-of-age novels. I dare you to find another author who would make the first 50 pages be about a struggle with a mean principal, and then take the action inside a mitochondria where alien replica of the principal attack the shrunk-down protaginists. For the fate of the universe.

We named our ragdoll cat Mrs. Whatsit, because she was large and looked like a pile of furry fudge ripple. (That and "Mr. Stitch" didn't occur to me until the other name had taken.) Cindy (my wife) has a shockingly close-to-complete collection of L'Engle, which include a dozen books taking the Time characters into non-fantasy non-sci-fi non-metaphysical adventures. It's bizarre, like H. Rider Haggard sent Allan Quartermain off to be a field hand for Anne of Green Gables. There will never be another writer able to pull off what L'Engle did.

Onto the story. Super Fun might not work if you don't know a bit of information that, growing up as I did in New Jersey, I might know better some some others. Check in with the wisdom of crowds here if you don't "get" the story once you listen to it.