Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Still Rising

I wonder why Susan Cooper's The Grey King won the Newbury Medal in 1975. In case you don't know, the Newbury was (and probably still is) a pretty prestigious award in the world of children's fiction. I'm not implying that the fourth novel in her The Dark is Rising sequence didn't deserve the prize, but I would have thought the second titular novel would have been the more obvious contender simply because the later book is so strange - and so sort of grown up. Compellingly so, for me.

I'm getting close to the end and wishing I had time to finish it, but I don't want to rush. There's so much to enjoy in the quality of the prose. (I suppose that might explain the award, since I can't honestly describe the plot as gripping.) So it looks like the novel will accompany us on our journey north over an extended weekend break.

More anon. Probably.

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