A poem, a pot, a pomegranate, a photograph can serve as a star or a pointer on a foggy dark evening.
A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
–Madeleine L’Engle, from her Newbery Award Acceptance Speech: The Expanding Universe, August 1963.