Madeleine L'Engle

The much loved children's writer Madeleine L'Engle has died in Connecticut, age 88. Though she wrote more than 60 books, her best known is "A Wrinkle in Time," winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963.

The story concerns Meg Murry and her little brother Charles Wallace, visited one night by a mysterious stranger who leads them on a journey through time and space, on a perilous mission to rescue their father. The book was followed by four more with the same characters, which together compose the "Wrinkle in Time" quintet.

Still a strong-selling book, this was one of those that has stayed with its young readers into adulthood. A colleague, very much an adult, this afternoon told me that if as a child she had had a dog, she would have named him Charles Wallace.