92 pages 3 hours read

Susan Cooper

The Dark Is Rising

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1973

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Further Reading & Resources

Further Reading: Literature

Additional middle grade and young adult fantasy emphasizing folklore and mythology of Great Britain:

The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper (1965-1977)

This five-book series (consisting of Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; and Silver on the Tree) traces the finding of the four great objects of power that will allow the Light to finally expel the Dark from this plane of reality.

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (1964)

The five books of the series are set in the fictional fantasy land of Prydain, which is built around the earliest folklore of Wales. The whole story is a bildungsroman (a novel about the growth and education of a young person). The protagonist, Taran, learns that his destiny and identity are not something he is born into; they must be both earned and created for himself.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)

L’Engle’s series of fantasy stories features Meg Murry, her brother (Charles Wallace), and Meg’s friend Calvin O'Keefe. In the first book, Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin go in search of Meg’s father, who disappeared while studying a Tesseract—a four-dimensional fold in space.