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The Dark Is Rising Sequence
''The Dark Is Rising Sequence'' is a series of five contemporary fantasy novels for older children and young adults that were written by the British author Susan Cooper and published from 1965 to 1977. The first book in the series, ''Over Sea, Under Stone'', was originally conceived as a stand-alone novel, and the sequence gets its name from the second novel in the series, '' The Dark Is Rising''. ''The Dark Is Rising Sequence'' is used as an over-arching title in several omnibus, boxed-set, and coordinated editions; but the title of ''The Dark is Rising'' is also used for the whole series. The books depict a struggle between forces of good and evil called "The Light" and "The Dark", and draw upon Arthurian legends, Celtic mythology, Norse mythology and English folklore. Both magical and ordinary children are prominent throughout the series. It was inaugurated in 1965 with the U.K. publication by Jonathan Cape of ''Over Sea, Under Stone''. The sequels were published 1973 to 19 ...
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Susan Cooper
Susan Mary Cooper (born 23 May 1935) is an English author of children's books. She is best known for '' The Dark Is Rising'', a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as the Arthurian legends and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council. Biography Cooper was born in 1935 in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, to Ethel May (''née'' Field) and her husband John Richard Cooper. Her father had worked in the reading room of the Natural History Museum until going off to fight in the Second World War, from which he returned with a wounded leg. He then pursued a career in the offices of the Great Western Railway. Her mother was a teacher of ten-year-olds ...
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Newbery Medal
The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children". The Newbery and the Caldecott Medal are considered the two most prestigious awards for children's literature in the United States. Books selected are widely carried by bookstores and libraries, the authors are interviewed on television, and master's theses and doctoral dissertations are written on them. Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the winner of the Newbery is selected at the ALA's Midwinter Conference by a fifteen-person committee. The Newbery was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children's book award in the world. The physical bronze medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and is given to the winning author at ...
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an a ...
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Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
''Seventh Son of a Seventh Son'' is the seventh studio album by English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It was released on 11 April 1988 in the United Kingdom by EMI Records and in the United States by Capitol Records. Like '' The Number of the Beast'' (1982) and later ''Fear of the Dark'' (1992), ''The Final Frontier'' (2010), and '' The Book of Souls'' (2015), the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. The lead single "Can I Play with Madness" was also a commercial success, peaking at No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. A concept album inspired by the novel '' Seventh Son'' by Orson Scott Card, the record incorporates elements of progressive rock, seen in the length and complex structure of the title track. It was also the first Iron Maiden album to feature keyboards, after the band had introduced non-keyboard synth effects on their previous LP, '' Somewhere in Time'' (1986). After his contributions were rejected for ''Somewhere in Time'', ''Seventh Son of a Seventh ...
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Tethys (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Tethys (; grc, Τηθύς, Tēthýs) was a Titan daughter of Uranus and Gaia, a sister and wife of the Titan Oceanus, and the mother of the river gods and the Oceanids. Although Tethys had no active role in Greek mythology and no established cults, she was depicted in mosaics decorating baths, pools, and triclinia in the Greek East, particularly in Antioch and its suburbs, either alone or with Oceanus. Genealogy Tethys was one of the Titan offspring of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). Hesiod lists her Titan siblings as Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Cronus. Tethys married her brother Oceanus, an enormous river encircling the world, and was by him the mother of numerous sons (the river gods) and numerous daughters (the Oceanids). According to Hesiod, there were three thousand (i.e. innumerable) river gods. These included Achelous, the god of the Achelous River, the largest river in Greece, who g ...
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Runes
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised purposes thereafter. In addition to representing a sound value (a phoneme), runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named ( ideographs). Scholars refer to instances of the latter as ('concept runes'). The Scandinavian variants are also known as ''futhark'' or ''fuþark'' (derived from their first six letters of the script: '' F'', '' U'', '' Þ'', '' A'', '' R'', and '' K''); the Anglo-Saxon variant is '' futhorc'' or ' (due to sound-changes undergone in Old English by the names of those six letters). Runology is the academic study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialised branch of Germanic philology. The earliest secure runic inscriptions date from ...
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Stanton Drew Stone Circles
The Stanton Drew stone circles are just outside the village of Stanton Drew in the English county of Somerset. The largest stone circle is the Great Circle, in diameter and the second largest stone circle in Britain (after Avebury); it is considered to be one of the largest Neolithic monuments to have been built. The date of construction is not known, but is thought to be between 3000 and 2000 BCE, which places it in the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. It was made a scheduled monument in 1982. The Great Circle was surrounded by a ditch and is accompanied by smaller stone circles to the northeast and southwest. There is also a group of three stones, known as The Cove, in the garden of the local pub. Slightly further from the Great Circle is a single stone, known as Hautville's Quoit. Some of the stones are still vertical, but the majority are now recumbent, and some are no longer present. The stone circles have been studied since John Aubrey's visit in 1664, and some exca ...
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Greenwitch
Greenwitch is a contemporary fantasy novel by Susan Cooper, published by Atheneum Press in 1974. It is the third entry in the five book ''Dark Is Rising Sequence''. Synopsis The Drew children – Simon, Jane, and Barney – return to Cornwall with their uncle Merriman Lyon. Merriman enlists them along with Will Stanton, his protégé, to recover a golden grail needed to defeat the forces of the Dark. Themes The book draws heavily on Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend, as well as Classical mythology. The figure of the " Greenwitch", and the associated all-female festival attended by Jane, has been compared to female fertility rites in European mythology. Critical reception The book received mixed to positive reviews from critics. '' Kirkus Reviews'' described it as "breathtakingly impressive", but criticized the conflict between good and evil as being overly abstract. Both Rebecca Fisher of ''Fantasy Literature'' and Tara L. Rivera of Common Sense Media praised Coope ...
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King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He appears in two early medieval historical sources, the ''Annales Cambriae'' and the '' Historia Brittonum'', but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure.Tom Shippey, "So Much Smoke", ''review'' of , ''London Review of Books'', 40:24:23 (20 December 2018) His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as '' Y Gododdin''. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associa ...
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Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miraculous healing powers, sometimes providing eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often guarded in the custody of the Fisher King and located in the hidden Grail castle. By analogy, any elusive object or goal of great significance may be perceived as a "holy grail" by those seeking such. A "grail" (Old French: ''graal'' or ''greal''), wondrous but not unequivocally holy, first appears in '' Perceval, the Story of the Grail'', an unfinished chivalric romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story inspired many continuations, translators and interpreters in the later-12th and early-13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the Grail as a stone. The Christian, Celtic or possibly other or ...
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Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, with the River Tamar forming the border between them. Cornwall forms the westernmost part of the South West Peninsula of the island of Great Britain. The southwesternmost point is Land's End and the southernmost Lizard Point. Cornwall has a population of and an area of . The county has been administered since 2009 by the unitary authority, Cornwall Council. The ceremonial county of Cornwall also includes the Isles of Scilly, which are administered separately. The administrative centre of Cornwall is Truro, its only city. Cornwall was formerly a Brythonic kingdom and subsequently a royal duchy. It is the cultural and ethnic origin of the Cornish diaspora ...
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Film Adaptation
A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dialogic process. While the most common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis, other works adapted into films include non-fiction (including journalism), autobiographical works, comic books, scriptures, plays, historical sources and even other films. Adaptation from such diverse resources has been a ubiquitous practice of filmmaking since the earliest days of cinema in nineteenth-century Europe. In contrast to when making a remake, movie directors usually take more creative liberties when creating a film adaptation. Elision and interpolation In 1924, Erich von Stroheim attempted a literal adaptation of Frank Norris's novel ''McTeague'' with his film '' Greed.'' The resulting film was 9½ hours long, and was cut to four ...
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