With them are their parents and a mysterious family friend named Merriman Lyon, whom they know simply as “Great-Uncle Merry.” The Drew children’s discovery of a real treasure map takes them on an exciting, frightening quest to discover a grail that has been hidden for over a thousand years. The first book in the cycle, Over Sea, Under Stone, begins with three children, Simon, Jane, and Barnabas Drew, who are on holiday in Trewissick, a sleepy Cornwall village. While I do not value books simply because they win awards, the fact that Cooper’s books have won them tells me that many other people have found them as compelling as I have. Of the five, The Dark is Rising was a Newbery Honor Book, and The Grey King actually won the Newbery Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in children’s literature.

The Dark is Rising cycle is composed of five books: Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King, and Silver on the Tree. The story compels me to this day, and I continue to re-read it every few years. They were a door into Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising cycle, one of the most compelling stories I had ever read.

It wasn’t that I expected them to make something happen the words were a “happening” in and of themselves, and just saying them put me into the middle of it. When I was a teenager I often repeated these lines to myself as a kind of charm. Three from the circle, three from the track When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back

Green Boy by Susan Cooper