Dear Ones,
A new teachers’ guide is out, inspiring deeper conversations around the book Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by her Granddaughters.
The unit is perfect for encouraging students to think critically about artists, their work, and childhood influences. The book lends itself to reflecting on Madeleine L’Engle herself in a unique way. Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy’s book is unlike boring, dry biographies that are often foisted on young readers. Instead, Becoming Madeleine includes never-before-shared pictures, letters, diary entries, and insight only Madeleine’s granddaughters could tell.
The teachers’ guide takes the learning a step further by relating Madeleine’s life to her legacy and her work. Questions and writing prompts spark some critical thinking (and meet Common Core standards, which you can tweak til your heart’s content to fit your audience). Here’s a couple, for example:
- Though she could be social, Madeleine struggled with peer relationships periodically and spent a great deal of time in her own head, dreaming of stories. How might doing this help create a storyteller?
- Throughout the biography, readers learn that while trying to excel at her craft, Madeleine reaches out to published poets and authors. What can readers infer about her based on these actions?
Aspiring young authors and new fans of L’Engle (especially those middle-grade readers) can be encouraged in the discussions, too, to reflect on their own lives and work. Ooh. So good, right?
The guide is free, just like the guide for A Wrinkle in Time; both compliments of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. Let us know how you’re using them in classroom! We’d love to hear about what it’s inspired.
Tesser well,
— Erin F. Wasinger, for madeleinelengle.com.
P.S. The ebook is on sale through the end of March 2019!
I (Erin) remember first reading A Wrinkle in Time as a middle-schooler. I can still picture my school’s copy with its blue cover, colliding circles, and white silhouettes. The sides of its pages were worn smooth by readers before me (a quiet endorsement in a school library). I loved the story and was confused all at once, pouring over its pages from the dark and stormy night to Meg’s return home. Most memorable, though, was my impulse to talk about the book with my friends: I simply had to.