She was Cecily Carey with a half a birthday coming in the summer and she was the little girl in the mirror and God owned the world and she was very thirsty. So she got up and put on her slippers and bathrobe and went into the bathroom and reached for her glass.
-- Narrator ("The Birthday," Story 1)

Importance: Here, Cecily is about to have a temper tantrum as she longs for the attention of her mother and father. But here, as the story ends, Cecily, though only a very young child, has learned that "'God owns the world'" as her mother taught her (3). Before she remembered the words of her mother, Cecily has as existential a crisis as any young child can have: the thought occurs to here that not everyone in the world cares that it is her birthday, and a humongous doom and gloom sets in upon here. In this quote, L'Engle shows...