Two weeks ago the literary world lost another beloved author, Madeleine L'Engle. Melissa Hart, author of the memoir "The Assault of Laughter," shared her memories of this cherished writer on Powell's blog.

Remembering Madeleine L'Engle
Every day after lunch, we sat in our fifth grade classroom and listened as Mrs. Jansta read a novel for fifteen minutes. The room was warm and smelled of grass and sour milk. I put my head down on my desk. Beside me, Kristen Hernandez snored. But I remained wide awake, riveted by books like The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Where the Red Fern Grows, and especially by A Wrinkle in Time.

In the late 1960s, Madeleine L'Engle struggled to interest editors in her book. Finally, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published it and it promptly won the Newbery. Hers was a strange novel of child protagonists who grappled busily with morality and physics. I couldn't grasp her "tesseract" concept and how I might use it to transcend space and time to propel myself off to the beach, but I understood her theme perfectly. Don't conform. Celebrate joy and love and originality. Otherwise, you'll end up in a glass case like the terrifying disembodied brain at the end of her novel.

Throughout adolescence, I read her other books — the rest of the Wrinkle trilogy and obscure young adult novels she penned before her fame. From the latter, I learned to love Holst's The Planets, Bach's cantatas, El Greco, and Shakespeare. My favorite of her books, A Ring of Endless Light, inspired a letter on my finest unicorn stationery. "Dear Ms. L'Engle," I penned carefully. "Thank you for your book. I want to be a writer and work with dolphins like Vicky does in your novel. Love, Melissa Hart." She wrote back.

Dear Melissa, thank you for the lovely unicorn paper. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you will work with dolphins. And you will become a writer. Love, Madeleine

"What'd you do today?" Oreo asks, though Bagheera rarely strays more than a hundred feet from the house. Sometimes the other cats will tease him, singing, "He's got the whole yard / at his paws..."

Bagheera says, "Hung out under the Claytons' porch this morning, in the garden most of the afternoon."

Oreo used to question aloud Bagheera's motives for staying put, and whether he was scared of what might be hiding down the block. At first Bagheera would tell him, "No, I'm not scared," then he wouldn't bother answering, and finally one time he shot back, "Are you scared of an inner life?" Oreo shut up after that.

Oreo had always assumed that Bagheera is smart. It hadn't occurred to him previously that Bagheera might simply use his brain more.

He imagines himself in Bagheera's place, among the year's last tomatoes. They smell great, don't they, tomatoes on the vine? He wills himself to daydream.

But kids shout to each other in the park beyond the backyard fence. Dog collars jingle on the sidewalk out front. Tree limbs beg him to climb. Meanwhile, the bulkhead is wide open at Thelma's, Oreo can sense it.

Distractions.

"Good times?" Oreo asks.

"Worms and spiders," Bagheera replies. "A bluebird raised hell for about a half-hour and then disappeared."

Fup and Bear are holding court in Thelma's basement right now, Oreo might even be willing to bet.

"I'm going to see if anyone's at Thelma's," the black and white cat decides. He should check. Might as well. "Want to come? No?"