Meet the author-illustrator behind the Eisner-winning adaptation of a sci-fi classic.
Thursday, Sept. 19, join us for an Arlington Reads conversation between author Hope Larson and librarian Jennifer Santure on Larson's graphic novel adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," which spent 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and for which she won an Eisner Award.
The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. Copies of the book will be available for sale, courtesy of One More Page Books.
On her lifelong love of L'Engle's work.
Excerpt from "Hope Larson on Adapting A Wrinkle in Time" (The Beat).
"I started with 'A Wrinkle in Time,' but I ended up reading a lot of [L'Engle's] other books, too. There was a bookstore in Asheville called Accent on Books, and my parents would often take me and my brother there after church on Sundays, since it was next to the restaurant where we often ate Sunday lunch.
Accent on Books had a great kids’ section, and there was a shelf with seemingly limitless books by L’Engle. Her books fascinated me because they were more thematically complicated and edgier than most of the other books for younger readers."
On being asked to take on a classic like "A Wrinkle in Time."
Excerpt from "Why I Adapted 'A Wrinkle In Time'" (HuffPost).
"It was one of those e-mails you have to read two, three times, just to make sense of it. Would I be interested in adapting Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' into a comic?
A year earlier, a librarian had passed through town and interviewed me. How, she asked, did I feel about adaptations? I told her they didn't interest me; I couldn't imagine spending years on a story I hadn't even written. Except one: 'A Wrinkle in Time.' L'Engle has been a favorite author of mine since childhood, and her influence has left its fingerprints all over my work. I wouldn't mind spending a few hundred pages with Meg Murry. And how often does one get to draw a tesseract?
But when it came to signing on for real, I got cold feet. What if I couldn't do the book justice? What about the people-the people on the Internet-who throw up their hands and moan about their ruined childhoods whenever anyone adapts anything? Neither of those thoughts was as frightening as the possibility that someone else, someone who didn't love the book as much as I did, would take the job and make a mess of things. I agreed to do it."
On bringing the iconic protagonist Meg to life.
Excerpt from "The Mary Sue Interview: Hope Larson" (The Mary Sue).
"She’s one of my favorite characters of all time, and it was so much fun to 'act' through her. She has a lot of feelings, and a lot of not-nice feelings, and that’s a refreshing change from 'nice' and 'relatable' characters. Personally, I think characters who have a lot of difficult feelings are much more relatable than the nice ones.
I also had fun picking out Meg’s clothes—and everyone else’s—from an old Sears catalog."