Newberry Medal Winner: 1976

As my family persistently seeks new book series to read together, we took the adventurous step of trying out some Newberry winners. I have about 60 of them on my book shelves (well, now they’re all packed away in anticipation of our move), and this one appeared the most intriguing of the lot, after our first book, Call It Courage (1940).

Overall, we weren’t too excited about this story, but not because of the writing. I rarely do research on books before I pick them up. Reviewers like me love to summarize books, but too often include spoilers that make the actual reading adventure far less enjoyable. I always try to avoid spoilers, though I’m sure they slip in sometimes. Pobody’s nerfect.

What I failed to realize before starting this book is that it’s actually the fourth in a five-book series called The Dark Is Rising sequence. No wonder this strange world underlaying Wales has no explanation! No wonder it seems that Will’s reincarnation as an Old One is supposed to feel entirely natural to us. We came into this thing totally blind, and it took us too long get our bearings. We finished the book, and the writing and overall concept were great, but we learned to appreciate and understand it just a bit too late, after we’d already lost interest.

The back cover of my copy suggests that Cooper is like a modern C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien, so who wouldn’t want to read such a book? The more I read, though, the more I compared it to A Wrinkle in Time in my mind. It’s less epic-fantasy  in the Tolkien sense and more magical-fantasy in the L’Engle sense. It’s a series that I might enjoy in another life, which is to say, I really didn’t like it and can’t see myself every growing into it.

Some lines were deep, interesting yet too philosophical for my kids (10, 12). This monologue from Rowlands, for example, has depths that could be plumbed yet requires a better understanding of the book’s universes to have any real discussion about:

Those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun… At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders—oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the center of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the universe. (115)

Reading this book aloud was also a challenge for me, mainly because I don’t speak Welsh and had trouble with trying to mouth the dialects and pronounce the foreign words. This could be a great series for kids to devour in their own private reading, as they watch the Dark rise and hope for the Light to be victorious. It’s just not for me.

I’m sure the Newberry judges knew what they were doing when they made this novel their top pick for children in 1976, but we didn’t like it. Hopefully the other selections from my collection will treat us better.

©2023 E.T.