this book also features Rufus, who is not just a good dog, but a smart dog as well. I appreciated the often ambiguous menace of the forces threatening the protagonists, in particular the idea of Evil wearing a pleasant, cheerful face while bringing you sandwiches or tucking you in for bedtime. the swift pace and uncluttered prose, the nonchalant realism of how the children relate to each other, the process in which the clues on the map are discovered, the mysterious Grey House, the pleasant atmosphere of Cornwall itself. once upon a time, a long time ago, I started this series by reading The Dark Is Rising - and Over Sea, Under Stone was rather unimpressive to read after the intensity of that classic. This is probably my 3rd or 4th time reading this book, and this particular time found me more amused than impatient.

this opening book follows the Drew children on summer holiday in Cornwall as they hurtle breathlessly from place to place, ancient map in hand and Arthurian treasure awaiting them as they skillfully avoid the forces of evil. Visit her Facebook pages: a slight but winning intro into a phenomenal series. Recent books include the collaborative project 'The Exquisite Corpse Adventure' and her biography of Jack Langstaff titled 'The Magic Maker.' Her newest book is 'Ghost Hawk.' When Cooper is not working, she enjoys playing piano, gardening, and traveling. She has also written books for adults, as well as plays and Emmy-nominated screenplays, many in collaboration with the actor Hume Cronyn, whom she married in 1996. By that time, Susan Cooper had been living in America for 13 years, having moved to marry her first husband, an American professor, and was stepmother to three children and the mother of two.Ĭooper went on to write other well-received novels, including 'The Boggart' (and its sequel 'The Boggart and the Monster'), 'King of Shadows', and 'Victory,' as well as several picture books for young readers with illustrators such as Ashley Bryan and Warwick Hutton. After attending Oxford, where she became the first woman to ever edit that university's newspaper, Cooper worked as a reporter and feature writer for London's Sunday Times her first boss was James Bond creator Ian Fleming.Ĭooper wrote her first book for young readers in response to a publishing house competition 'Over Sea, Under Stone' would later form the basis for her critically acclaimed five-book fantasy sequence, 'The Dark Is Rising.' The fourth book in the series, 'The Grey King,' won the Newbery Medal in 1976. As a child, she loved to read, as did her younger brother, who also became a writer.

Susan Cooper was born in 1935, and grew up in England's Buckinghamshire, an area that was green countryside then but has since become part of Greater London. Susan Cooper's latest book is the YA novel 'Ghost Hawk' (2013)

The dark is rising series susan cooper