In the middle of a bustling holiday season when kids are usually pining for the latest techno-gadget or game to hit the shelves, the Y offers a lit-breather with the launch of a Children’s Reading series and local media has taken note.

New York magazine:

All too often these days, children—if they’re reading at all—have their noses in books pegged to television shows. It makes one long for the classics, and the 92nd Street Y is launching a reading series aimed at bringing old-school favorites into the “hearts and minds of today’s kids,” says Hanna Arie Gaifman, director of the Y’s Tisch Center for the Arts. The series kicks off December 15 with Charlotte Jones Voiklis, Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter, reading from L’Engle’s best-known book, A Wrinkle in Time. She’ll also discuss her grandmother’s life and answer questions. L’Engle passed away in September, and “in a way it does feel like a memorial,” says Voiklis, a native New Yorker. She claims having a famous writer as a grandmother was “absolutely normal,” until L’Engle visited her school, when “there was a great stir.”

The Newbery Medal-winning “Wrinkle in Time” spins a complex tale of three children on an interplanetary quest that pits them against an all-controlling evil. Ms. Voiklis said she and her sister would probably read much of the novel’s climax.

“My grandmother and my grandfather did dramatic readings together, and we’ve used that as somewhat of a starting point,” Ms. Voiklis said. They plan to read from several other books by L’Engle, who died in September at 88. They include “The Arm of the Starfish,” a scientific mystery, and “A Circle of Quiet,” a memoir in which L’Engle, above, reacts to being called a children’s writer. (She hated it.)

“She always insisted that if something was not good enough for grown-ups, it was not good enough for children,” Ms. Voiklis said.