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Even when Vanguard Press agreed to publish it, the novel was not published intact. An entire chapter, entitled The Anti-Muffins, was omitted. The chapter was about a small club of children who believe that people should not be too much like muffins, i.e., looking and behaving the same, and judged by superficial criteria (if it comes from the oven, it must be a muffin). It's hard to say after all these years whether the anti-conformist message was considered dangerous, or whether someone was upset by the middle class WASP kids being good friends with a poor Hispanic farm boy.
In 1980, The Pilgrim Press published The Anti-Muffins as a separate book. It has long-since gone out of print, and is considered rare. That hasn't stopped L'Engle fans from looking for the book ever since, so that they can read this missing chapter in the lives of the Austin family.
I'm glad to say this is no longer necessary. The current Farrar Straus Giroux edition of Meet the Austins, first published in 1997, restores The Anti-Muffins material back into the novel from which it was cut. (I'm pretty sure that even now, in 2002, the paperback edition still does not have this extra material.) If you're a fan of L'Engle's fiction, and especially of the books about Vicky Austin and her family, spend the extra money and get the hardcover. You won't regret it! ...
Then Maggy Hamilton, ten years old and newly orphaned, lands in their midst and does her best to change everything. For a time this little girl who has never known a real home before does a good job of disrupting the Austins' lives. To Maggy, toys are for breaking (her rich grandfather will replace them on demand, so why not?) and so are rules. Yet like all children, Maggy desperately wants to be loved. Can the Austins love her in spite of her obnoxious behavior? Or will her presence tear their happy family apart?
The answer to that question may be predictable, but the way it happens isn't predictable at all. Vicky as narrator has a sweet but decidedly not saccharine voice, and an outlook on life as a budding woman that when this story was first published (copyright 1960) was positively revolutionary. I particularly love the way L'Engle imbues this and many of her other books with a matter-of-fact yet profound spiritual dimension, by depicting Christians who live their faith as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
I'm surprised I didn't find this book when I was at the age level for which it was written, since in 1960 I was 8 years old. However, all really fine children's literature can also be enjoyed by adult readers; and that's especially true of Madeleine L'Engle's work. I look forward now to reading the rest of the Austin series.
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