Reading Madeleine L’Engle

Ecopsychology in Children’s and Adolescent Literature

Heidi A. Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032486994
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000987850
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Using a critical lens derived from ecopsychology and its praxis, ecotherapy, this book explores the relationships Madeleine L'Engle develops for her characters in a selection of the novels from her three Time, Austin family, and O'Keefe family series as those relationships develop along a human-nonhuman kinship continuum. This is accomplished through an examination both of pairs of novels from the fantastic and the realistic series, and of single novels which stand out as slightly different from the most prominent genre in a given series. Thus, this examination also shows L'Engle's fluid movement along a fantasy-reality continuum and demonstrates the integration of the three series with each other. Importantly, through examining these relationships and this movement along continuums in these novels, the project demonstrates how ecopsychology and ecotherapy provide strong and important – and as-yet virtually unexplored – intersections with children's literature.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• 1 Differentiation and Integration in A Wrinkle in Time and The Young Unicorns
• 2 Human Interpersonal Relationships in The Moon by Night and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• 3 Overcoming Fear of Death through Interspecies Relationships in A Ring of Endless Light
• 4 Oceans, Islands, and Reconciliation with Self and Others in A House Like a Lotus
• General Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Bibliography
• Index