Madeleine L'Engle wrote children's books that were too complicated for grown-ups.

As an author, she danced with demanding philosophical questions and toyed with quantum physics. She wrote about faith with devotion, dabbled in ethics, psychology, myth, art, politics and nature. And she blended everything into stories that describe the crushing complexity of a child's life in this century. Her books are timeless, but at the same time contemporary.

L'Engle wrote with the complexity of the best adult authors and poets, only she did so in a way that a sixth grader could understand. A sixth grader could follow her logic, embrace her characters, sense the themes of good and evil, man and nature, science and faith, and, without feeling overwhelmed by the book, simply enjoy a good read. But when that sixth grader turned into a seventh, or eighth, or ninth grader, or -- God forbid -- an adult, she or he might find even more.