The Dark Is Rising

OMG YES. plus there are a further two Earthsea books now, did you know?

Nice idea Astronewt in which case massive shout out for the Earthsea quartet.

The adult-Colin novel is called Boneland.

Maybe we should start a separate children's fantasy classics thread? Oh, they are all so good!

"She wants to be flowers but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting."

@pointythings I didn’t know about the third book so I will have a look - thank you. I agree that Robert Westall was also a great author. My favourite were Future Track Five and The Devil on the Road but they were very dark! I seem to remember The Watch House being adapted as a TV series.

Oh and I also loved Robert Westall and still have a box set. I think The Watch House was my favourite. He had a real gift for showing kids dealing with real-world problems framed by supernatural ones.

Dammit, now I wish I wasn't working so I could read all day.

@astronewt according to the reviews I've read it's really good. It also follows up on the damage Susan's experience did to her in later life (not a happy ending).

I tried a sample of that on my Kindle, but I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was my favourite, favourite book as a kid, and I found it a bit cognitive-dissonance-inducing to be reading a grown-up Colin with a grown-up's problems. I'm sure it's good though.

That's how I first read them (at school in the UK, they had all of them)

I would recommend reading The Dark is Rising first and then going back to Over Sea, Under Stone.

@BustopherPonsonbyJones I grew up in the Netherlands, but my mum (English teacher) made sure we had all the classics to read - we were a bilingual household following a year spent in the UK. She also single handedly revived the library of the school she worked in, so that instead of crappy abridged versions of 'the classics', Yrs 7 through 10 had lots of excellent YA fiction available. And that included Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner and let us not forget Robert Westall.

Did you know Alan Garner wrote a third book in the Alderley Edge series focusing on Colin as an adult? It's not a children's book, but it is on my list as something I want to read.

I agree re: Over Sea, Under Stone; it's good and everything, but it's a pretty typical kids adventure story. I think The Grey King is probably the best written, but somehow TDiR is midwinter to me. It defines that odd time when the year has declined to its darkest and everything is in stasis before Christmas.

I’ve not made it even halfway through the first episode, the narrator has already pissed me off. Perhaps it’s one of those things that just can’t be made right.

My favourite Christmas read and my favourite of the sequence. I will certainly listen to it, so thanks for tip. I really, really wish they’d do a proper film of the book (or even the whole series). We were so lucky having such amazing books to read when we were children. Not only Susan Cooper but Alan Garner, Joan Aiken, Diana Wynne Jones - in addition to all of the amazing authors from the 1940s and 1950s. Did any of you read books by Nicholas Stuart Gray? They were more fairytale-like but I always felt they had the same kind of link to folklore.

My favourite was Over Sea Under Stone of that series - I remember the library copy vividly.

I was really quite disappointed by the first episode unfortunately. The production and narrator are great, but the boy playing Will is just so wooden that it took me out of it completely. There are so many great child actors - surely they could have found someone better?

I've just listened to the first episode on my lunch break and got a bit shivery in the work canteen...

Headphones a must, I reckon.

Another fan here - subscribed on Sounds. Have read it to both my DCs.

I am so looking forward to the radio adaptation. I've been through many copies of the books since childhood having read them to death. My youngest son is named after characters from the series.

Ooh lovely, just subscribed to the podcast. I have that "early" edition @stinkingbishop though in rather worse condition than the one pictured - well thumbed!

The first episode is now available on BBC Sounds, although won't be broadcast until tomorrow. I'm going to listen in 'real time' so won't listen to the BBC Sounds episode until tomorrow.

I don't think this has been mentioned on the thread yet but it's been recorded partly in binaural sound, so headphones are recommended to get the full effect.

This is so exciting! Seeing that old cover gave me goosebumps. First books that, well, got me. I whittled myself a magic stick and everything 😀 Ten years later, I was reading English at Oxford. I really, really hope Susan Cooper knew what a wonderful thing she'd done for so many young minds. You've inspired me to look out my old copies and INSIST the DCs read them. Now. Or no pigs in blankets for them.

I just loved this series when I was a kid.

I’ll read it then, thanks!

Ahhhh I absolutely ADORED this book as a child - the references to the particularly British old ways really spoke to me. Reading it, along with Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles, has become as much a part of my Christmas traditions as making mince pies. Cannot wait for the adaptation.