I've been a big reader since about 3rd grade. I've always been a big dreamer with a big imagination. Both of my parents are avid readers as well. By 5th grade I was reading adult level novels like The Lord of the Rings and Stephen King novels. I tested at a 12th grade + reading level about that time as well. I was a voracious reader and I don’t think there was much that interested me that I hadn't read in the elementary school library by the end of my tenure there.
And then I started Middle school. I had an entirely new and different library to peruse! At some point in 6th grade we were assigned a Newberry Award book to read. I don’t remember if the teacher assigned the book or we chose from a list, but I ended up with Susan Cooper’s “Grey King”. This book changed the course of my reading, my research, and encouraged my own writing to new heights.
The “Grey King” is a book about a boy with great power who challenges the powers of the Dark forces around him. It’s set in Wales, and incorporates both Arthurian legend and Welsh Folklore. According to Wikipedia “The Grey King won the inaugural Tir na n-Og Award from the Welsh Books Council as the year's best English-language children's book with an "authentic Welsh background".” It also happens to be the fourth book in Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” series.
The main character is a boy named Will Stanton. Will has been VERY very ill, and goes to his Aunt’s farm in Wales to recuperate. He arrives winded, pale, and knowing he’s forgotten something VERY important, something world changing that he has to remember or it risks everything. Something the illness and fever took away from him. He befriends a lonely albino boy, Bran, who lives on the farm with his father and his dog Cadfall, who is a caretaker and sheep herder. Slowly snatches of an ancient poem return to Will, and guide him through the tasks he must take to save this bright land from the Dark, with Bran’s help. Through their adventures Will remembers who he is (an Old One of the Light), and Bran learns the truth of his birth and his heritage. They battle the Dark Lord, the Grey King who lives on, or under the mountain Cader Idris.
On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze
breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the light shall have the harp of gold.
By the pleasant lake the sleepers lie,
On Cadfan’s Way where the kestrels call;
Through the grim from the Grey King shadows fall,
Yet singing the golden harp shall guide
To break their sleep and bid them ride.
When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon’s sword the Dark shall fall.
Y meant yr mynyddoedd yn canu,
ac y mae’r arglwyddes yn dod.
Once I had read the book, and written my report, I went back to the beginning of the series and read it through to the end. I was in love, with the Welsh language, the Welsh people, and Great Britain as a whole (two books take place in Cornwall and one in England with only the 4th and 5th books taking place primarily in Wales). Because of this series I began studying Wales, Celts, and the Druids in earnest. I learned
Ogham found a Welsh/English dictionary, a book on Welsh Folk Lore, and Welsh language tapes on a trip to Disney (this before the days of the Internet), and kept note cards filled with information. I daydreamed about being an Old One. I wrote short stories about Wales and Welsh Folklore, just for my own entertainment and that of my friends. I taught my friends Ogham and we passed notes in class that were undecipherable to our teachers.
It was thanks to this book that I started to branch out towards other British authors like Dickens, Shakespeare, and Douglas Adams. Of course I was re-introduced to some of these authors in classes in school, but I read them much more often just for my own pleasure. This is also the reason I often had points taken from essays I wrote for classes because I spelled words ‘wrong’. I kept adding extra u’s, colour just looked right to me!
A whole new world was opened to me through Susan Cooper’s “The Grey King” in the 6th grade. One day I would love to visit some of the places mentioned in the books; I would love to walk the cliffs of Cornwall, visit the suburbs of London, and the mountains of Wales. I would look up to the mist on the top of Cader Idris and wonder if somewhere, beneath, there lie a Dark Lord, sleeping and waiting for the Old One and the Raven Boy to walk there once more. I may even have the courage to walk up there on All Hallow’s Eve.