Imatge de l'autor

Susan Cooper (1) (1935–)

Autor/a de The Dark Is Rising

Per altres autors anomenats Susan Cooper, vegeu la pàgina de desambiguació.

39+ obres 40,302 Membres 772 Ressenyes 149 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Susan Cooper was born in Buckinghamshire, England in May of 1935. She attended Slough Grammar School, and then went on to Somerville College and Oxford. She was the first woman to ever edit the University Magazine, the Cherwell. She graduated from Oxford with an MA in English and went to work for mostra'n més London's The Sunday Times as a reporter on the Atticus Column for Ian Flemming. She evenutally made it to features writer, during which time she wrote her first book, "Mandrake," a science fiction story for adults. Soon after the publication of "Mandrake," Cooper wrote the children's story "Over Sea, Under Stone" for a publishing house competition. It would later become the first of a five book series she would become famous for. She left England in 1963 to marry an American professor. Once there, she wrote two more books for adults, "Behind the Golden Gate" a study of America, and "Portrait of an Author" the biography of J. B. Priestley. In 1970, Cooper published "Dawn of Fear" an almost entirely autobiographical book about growing up as a child during the war. Even though Cooper wrote "Over Sea, Under Stone" as a entry for a publishing house competittion, she did not know at the time that it would be the first of her most famous copilation, "The Dark is Rising Series." In 1973 she wrote the second in the five book series, entitled "The Dark is Rising," published more than ten years after the first. In1974, Cooper published Greenwitch, book three, and book four, "The Grey King" a year later. "The Grey King" won the Newberry Medal in 1976. "Silver on the Tree" was the fifth and last book published, completing the series in 1977. After completing the "Dark is Rising" series, Cooper turned to writing for the theater, learning the style from Urjo Kareda at Tarragon Theatres in Toronto. She wrote for Jack Langstaff's "Revels." Her first major play was called "Foxfire," which was written in coolaboration with Hume Cronyn. The play eventually went to Broadway in 1983 and starred Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, who won a Tony for her performance. Cooper then began working on "Seaward," but was interrupted by Jane Fonda, who wanted her to write the screenplay for Harriet Arnow's "The Dollmaker." She wrote the adaptation with Cronyn and won a Humanitas Award for it, while Jane Fonda won the Best Actress Emmy for her role. Cooper also got an Emmy nomination for her adaptation of "Foxfire" for television. "To Dance with the White Dog," a made for tv movie, was the last collaboration of Cooper, Cronyn and Tandy, Tandy having died in '94. IN the '80's and '90's, Cooper wrote the text for many children's picture books such as, "Jethro and the Jumbie" and "Danny and the Kings." 1993 marked her return to the Children's Book List with "The Boggart" and int's follow up "The Boggart and the Monster" in 1997. In 1996, Cooper published a collection of essays on children's literature entitled, "Dreams and Wishes." Over the course of her career, Cooper has written for newspapers, books for children and adults, screen[plays for television and cinema, and a Broadwat play. Today, she lectures on children's literture and continues to write. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys

Sèrie

Obres de Susan Cooper

The Dark Is Rising (1973) 8,399 exemplars
Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) 6,543 exemplars
The Grey King (1975) 5,820 exemplars
Greenwitch (1974) 5,043 exemplars
Silver on the Tree (1977) 4,923 exemplars
The Dark is Rising Sequence (1965) 2,896 exemplars
The Boggart (1993) 1,522 exemplars
King of Shadows (1999) 1,255 exemplars
Seaward (1983) 693 exemplars
The Boggart and the Monster (1997) 535 exemplars
Victory (2006) 435 exemplars
Ghost Hawk (2013) 388 exemplars
The Magician's Boy (2005) 269 exemplars
Dawn of Fear (1970) 244 exemplars
The Shortest Day (2019) 242 exemplars
Green Boy (2002) 230 exemplars
Matthew's Dragon (1991) 116 exemplars
The Silver Cow (1983) 115 exemplars
The Selkie Girl (1986) 90 exemplars
Tam Lin (1991) 63 exemplars
The Boggart Fights Back (2018) 57 exemplars
Mandrake (1964) 44 exemplars
Danny and the Kings (1993) 36 exemplars
Haunted: Ghost Stories to Chill Your Blood (2011) — Col·laborador — 31 exemplars
Frog (2002) 27 exemplars
Jethro and the Jumbie (1979) 19 exemplars
To Dance with the White Dog [1993 TV movie] (1993) — Writer — 19 exemplars
The Word Pirates (2019) 18 exemplars
Out of Us All (1969) 1 exemplars

Obres associades

The Owl Service (1967) — Prefaci, algunes edicions1,942 exemplars
Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out (2008) — Col·laborador — 342 exemplars
The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy (2006) — Col·laborador — 237 exemplars
When I Was Your Age, Volume One: Original Stories About Growing Up (1996) — Col·laborador — 224 exemplars
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourth Annual Collection (1991) — Col·laborador — 155 exemplars
Acting Out (2008) — Col·laborador — 66 exemplars
Winter: A Folio Anthology (2016) — Introducció — 65 exemplars
911: The Book of Help (2002) — Col·laborador — 49 exemplars
First Light: A celebration of Alan Garner (2016) — Col·laborador — 29 exemplars
Don't Read This! : And Other Tales of the Unnatural (1994) — Col·laborador — 23 exemplars
Essays of Five Decades (1968) — Editor, algunes edicions20 exemplars
Foxfire [1987 TV movie] (1987) — Screenplay — 13 exemplars
Twisted winter (2013) — Col·laborador — 4 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Membres

Converses

127. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper a Backlisted Book Club (març 2022)
YA modern-day magic family song Arthurian a Name that Book (març 2012)
YA about collecting medals a Name that Book (novembre 2011)
Group read - Over Sea, Under Stone a 75 Books Challenge for 2009 (desembre 2009)
Book Discussion: The Dark is Rising a The Green Dragon (maig 2008)
Book Discussion: Over Sea, Under Stone a The Green Dragon (febrer 2007)

Ressenyes

It's possible I would have liked this in my pre-20s mad for anything Arthurian days. It's also possible that the plodding tale and the complete acceptance of her brothers' belittling her for being a girl might have made me less than enthusiastic. At one point, middle child Jane gets picked up and carried during a chase. Now the ever so 60s emphasis on good vs evil doesn't go over with me at all. Arthur was fighting for law and land, not for abstract good, though it's easy to frame it that way, just not really meaningful or interesting.… (més)
 
Marcat
quondame | Hi ha 139 ressenyes més | Mar 15, 2024 |
Danny longs for his baby brother Joe to have a Christmas tree in this lovely holiday picture book, but his mother tells him that while she can afford to give the two boys gifts, there simply isn't any money left over for a tree this year. Matters seem to be looking up when his friend Steve, repentant for having punched Danny in a brief fit of anger, gives him a little evergreen from his garden, but then a near miss on the highway leaves the little tree destroyed, and his plan in ruins. Little does Danny realize however, that the truck drivers he meets, having learned of his plan, have decided to play the role of the Three Kings...

I haven't seen very many children's books which highlight both the magic of the Christmas season and the experiences of working class people, so Danny and the Kings was quite a treat. Danny and his family are clearly poor, living in a small trailer in a trailer park next to a busy highway. His mother mentions his father at one point, hinting at the possible death of this absent parent, sometime in the past. Despite this fact, the narrative here is matter-of-fact, depicting these circumstances, not as a tragedy, but as the simple reality with which our eponymous protagonist must contend. Danny's desire to do something generous for his little brother is rewarded by the three truckers, working men who might be the Three Kings, or who might simply be acting as the Three Kings, in much the same way parents act as Santa Claus to their children. I liked the open-ended way that the narrative approached this question, as it hints at one of the central truths of Christianity: that its adherents are meant to emulate Christ, to act as he would, as much as they are able, given the lesser gifts at their disposal. Susan Cooper's unsentimental telling makes this message more powerful I think, and her text is well-matched by illustrator Jos. A. Smith's watercolor artwork, which is beautiful but realistic. This pair also worked together on Matthew's Dragon, which I now hope to track down. As for this one, I would recommend it to picture book readers looking for stories about Christmas, and how the Christmas spirit can often be found in all kinds of places and in the hearts of all kinds of people.
… (més)
 
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AbigailAdams26 | Mar 12, 2024 |
A harsh and miserly man, Gwilym Hughes was a Welsh farmer whose land lay beneath Llyn Barfog, a mountain lake known as "the bearded lake" in English. His son Huw longed to go to school like the boys in the village, but his father made him mind the cows instead, and forbade him from playing his harp. Sneaking this instrument up to the lake whenever he could, Huw would play by the waters anyway, attracting the attention of the Tylwyth Teg (fairy folk), who sent a magical silver cow in thanksgiving. The milk and cheese from this cow, and from her many children made Gwilym Hughes a wealthy man, but it didn't make him kinder or more grateful, and when he went to butcher the silver cow, she and all her children were called home to the lake, leaving him in poverty again...

One of three folktales retold by Susan Cooper in picture book form and illustrated by Warwick Hutton—the other two being The Selkie Girl and Tam Lin—this Welsh story apparently belongs to the village of Aberdyfi (AKA Aberdovey), the ancestral village of some of Cooper's family. It is a pourquoi story, explaining how the Bearded Lake came to be ringed by white lilies, and is a very melancholy tale, depicting a man whose ungenerous and unkind nature remains unchanged, even when good fortune comes to him, a man who loses that good fortune through greed and stupidity. I found it very poignant, and thought the telling was excellent—the best of all three of these Celtic folktale picture books from Cooper and Hutton. Although Hutton isn't my favorite illustrator—I find his work interesting, but can never quite take it to heart—and although I tend to find his human figures off-putting, here I thought his watercolor paintings suited the story. Perhaps because the landscape itself plays such an important role in the story, and I have no quarrel with the artist's depiction of that. However that may be, this was an excellent folktale retelling, and is one I would recommend to young folklore enthusiasts in general, and to readers interested in Welsh lore in particular.
… (més)
 
Marcat
AbigailAdams26 | Hi ha 2 ressenyes més | Mar 9, 2024 |
Opening on Midwinter Eve, this immensely powerful and intensely engaging children's fantasy, the second in Susan Cooper's five-volume Dark Is Rising Sequence, is a book I read again and again as a girl. Will Stanton, who turns eleven on Midwinter Day, coming into his own as one of the Old Ones—servants of the Light, in eternal conflict with the forces of the Dark, which are intent on ruling the world—learns more about his role as the Sign Seeker as he travels through time, visiting England in different centuries. The book follows him on his quest to assemble the six signs, which together form one of the Things of Power that the Light will use to eventually defeat the Dark for all time. It is a journey that is intertwined with his large and loving family's celebration of the holiday season, from Midwinter through Christmas, and on to Twelfth Night, and one that will eventually draw in figures and traditions from local folklore, including Herne the Hunter and the Wild Hunt...

Published in 1973, a number of years after the first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, which came out in 1965, The Dark Is Rising switches focus a bit, changing protagonist and setting. Whereas that earlier title concerned the three Drew siblings, and their quest to find King Arthur's chalice, hidden on the headland of a small Cornish village, this entry focuses on Will, the youngest of a large Buckinghamshire family, and expands the overarching narrative considerably, exploring the larger and deeper cosmological struggle only hinted at in the earlier book. The Drew children do not appear here, and are not mentioned, although the chalice they found is referenced, as the first of the Things of Power being assembled in the Light's struggle against the Dark. The bridge between the two is really the character of Merriman, the oldest and one of the wisest of the Old Ones, who guides Will through his education and quest.

Beautifully written and wonderfully conceived, it is not difficult to see why this book won a Newbery Honor in 1974. From the time I first read it, I have loved it, and this latest reread, undertaken as part of a project to read the entire series with friends, has not changed my feelings an iota. I still love the use of folklore and mythology throughout, in both overt and discreet ways (so many of the names have a deeper meaning!), I love the settings, and quest itself. I love the poem, which I memorized and would recite with a friend and fellow admirer of the series, when young. I both love and am haunted by the story of Hawkin, whose fate is one I have always struggled with, from childhood to adulthood, worrying away at the questions of choice, justice, and morality. This is truly a marvelous book, and is one I wholeheartedly recommend to all fantasy readers. I finished this reread with a keen desire to proceed on to the next in the series, Greenwitch.
… (més)
 
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AbigailAdams26 | Hi ha 226 ressenyes més | Mar 2, 2024 |

Llistes

1960s (1)
1990s (1)
Ghosts (1)
1970s (1)

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Estadístiques

Obres
39
També de
14
Membres
40,302
Popularitat
#439
Valoració
4.0
Ressenyes
772
ISBN
594
Llengües
14
Preferit
149

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