I love this illustration by Debbie Ridpath Ohi. The quote by Madeleine L’Engle seems particularly apt for Banned Books Week, as her most famous book, A Wrinkle in Time has been on banned and challenged book lists since its publication in the 1960s.
Debbie has lots of other awesome illustrations available for sharing and printing. Make sure to check out her great work and share your enthusiasm for reading!
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”—Madeleine L’Engle
(Image by molosovsky)
“Being a writer does not necessarily mean being published. It’s very nice to be published. It’s what you want. When you have a vision, you want to share it. But being a writer means writing. It means building up a body of work. It means writing every day. You can hardly say that van Gogh was not a painter because he sold one painting during his lifetime, and that to his brother. But do you say that van Gogh wasn’t a painter because he wasn’t “published?” He was a painter because he painted, because he held true to his vision as he saw it. And I think that’s the best example I can give you.”–Madeleine L’Engle
From Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life; probably the best example of why the writing itself is what matters.
Austin Allen looks at how Madeleine L’Engle combines fantasy and religion in her potentially most famous work, A Wrinkle in 
Time:
“I think she’s being careful, ducking accusations of parochialism, and leaving everything up to the reader’s interpretation. But I also think the variety of her idols suggests a restless imagination, one that was more confined than inspired by doctrinaire Christianity. Her impulse toward sermonizing wrestles with her impulse toward a vision that is—like her extraterrestrials and shimmering presences—unclassifiable.”
This is one reason that I like L’Engle’s work in general. She acknowledges a greater purpose in the general and, even as she tends toward the Christian, suggests that whatever the universe is, it’s beyond our current power of comprehension. But that doesn’t mean we should strive to reach out toward it.