A Wrinkle in Time in 90 Seconds and Other Challenges

Pal-o-mine and Chicago author James Kennedy can't just leave you and yours alone to wallow in your winter sweatpants and mope. No, he's challenging everyone to take part in The 90-Second Newberry Film Festival.

The contest, in conjunction with the New York Public Library, is straightforward enough: make a video that squeezes a Newbery award-winning book into ninety seconds (or less... but with such limited real estate, who's going to use less? Then again, a three second version could be infinitely hilarious).

I of course can't predict who the winner will be, but if the first video is any indication, the results will be amazing. Prepare yourself for viral videos galore.

Time and Madeleine L'Engle

Farewell to beloved fantasy author Madeleine L'Engle, who left us, many volumes the richer, this past Thursday. While later books may not have held up as substantially to scrutiny , "A Wrinkle in Time" holds fast as one of the best books of its kind. It, along with a small cluster of books, shaped me and the stories which I draw and to which I'm drawn. And each time I return to the world she crafted I'm never left questioning what it was I loved so much the first or last time I visited. That book, and certainly many of her others, travels through time as easily as its protagonists.

Reading more on her since her death, I appreciated this quote (also in the above linked Times article), as this is often how I feel things end up in my books:

"I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that is true of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice."