Free Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? by Madeleine L'Engle Page B

rather than in textbooks. But how apologetic many adults are when they are caught reading a book of fiction! They tend to hide it and tell you about the “How-To” book, which is what they are really reading. Fortunately, nobody ever told me that stories were untrue, or should be outgrown, and then as now they nourished me and kept me willing to ask the unanswerable questions.
    I read indiscriminately, and I read what I call One-Read Books as well as Seven-Read Books. I don’t think the One-Read Books did me much harm. I read them and forgot them. The Seven-Read Books—and sometimes Ten- and Twenty-Read Books—undoubtedly did influence me. And I wonder how these beloved books would fare today with those looking for excuses to ban and burn?
    I must have read Emily of New Moon at least once a month for a couple of years. Emily has recently come back into print, and I read it again. It no longer had the same impact it had on me when I was ten, but there is still much loveliness in it—Emily’s passionate response to the beauty of nature, for instance. But possibly some people would find this suspect, because Emily refers to the wind as The Wind Woman, and she speaks of the Flash, a moment of unexpected glory which often comes when least expected.
    But of course what meant most to me in the Emily Books was Emily’s determination to be a writer, her understanding of the immense work it takes to write a story, her willingness to listen to a crusty but creative teacher, to learn. Of course I identified with Emily. And Emily also had a touch of her Scottish ancestors’ second sight. I suspect this would terrify those who don’t take notice of ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night with the Scottish openness to the world beyond our immediate senses.
    Another favorite was The Wind in the Willows , with its delightful humor, and its delicate sense of wonder, especially in the chapter “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” The Secret Garden , too, was certainly a Seven-Read Book. As a child, I read my mother’s copy. I read it aloud many years later to a group of half-a-dozen little girls on a rainy weekend. And, a generation later, I had the joy of reading it aloud once again to my granddaughters. It’s a perennially loved book, because I think we all see something of ourselves in self-centered Mary Lennox, and we, too, are freed as she moves out of the prison of self into the wider world of love and friendship, for the Secret Garden is as much the garden of Mary’s heart as it is the English walled garden.
    But the wonder and beauty of Mole’s and Rat’s encounter with the great god Pan is immediately attacked as being un-Christian, and I was horrified to hear that one of the censoring groups wanted to burn The Secret Garden because Dickon, the Yorkshire boy, mentions the word magic .
    Someone sent me this quotation, without giving me the source: “A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few sources of information left that is served up without the silent black noise of a headline, the doomy hullabaloo of a commercial. It is one of the few havens remaining where a [person’s] mind can get both provocation and privacy.”
    I wish we were all that open-minded in our thinking and discussing.
    One time I was in the kitchen drinking tea with my husband and our young son, and they got into an argument about ice hockey. I do not feel passionate about ice hockey. They do. Finally our son said, “But Daddy, you don’t understand.” And my husband said, reasonably, “It’s not that I don’t understand, Bion. It’s just that I don’t agree with you.”
    To which the little boy replied hotly, “If you don’t agree with me, you don’t understand.”
    I think we all feel