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Three children on vacation in Cornwall find an ancient manuscript which sends them on a dangerous quest that entraps them in the eternal battle between the forces of the Light and the Dark.Tags
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ed.pendragon Another classic children's book with an Arthurian theme, bringing the Matter of Britain into the 20th century.
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humouress The same sense of adventure, and children in mid 20th century Britain striving against sinister adults.
Member Reviews
On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children—Simon, Jane and Barney—find themselves drawn into an exciting but dangerous adventure, as they discover a treasure map, and embark on a quest to find its object: a chalice that once belonged to the legendary King Arthur. Their search is about far more than a lost artifact however, as they discover from their Great Uncle Merry, a mysterious figure in their lives. No, it is all part of a great struggle between the forces of good and evil, between Light and Dark, and the children must struggle to ensure that the chalice does not fall into the wrong hands...
Published in 1965, Over Sea, Under Stone is the first in Susan Cooper's five-volume Dark Is Rising fantasy sequence, and is a book show more that I read and reread (along with its sequels) countless times as a girl. I am rereading it now as part of a group read of the entire series that I am currently conducting with some friends, and I found it every bit as engrossing as ever I did. Cooper has a knack for making places come alive, and the small Cornish village of Trewissick is no exception. One feels as if one were right there with the children, making discovers and fleeing the enemy. Suspenseful, entertaining, utterly gripping—this is an almost perfect blend of the classic British holiday adventure story and a work of fantasy fiction. Of course the latter is rather oblique: we get the sense of the great cosmological struggle in the background, but it doesn't emerge fully until the second book in the series, The Dark Is Rising, which switches focus (and protagonists). Still, there is a powerful sense of menace here, created through Cooper's skillful writing and storytelling, and the reader races along for the conclusion. I finished this one eager to continue my reread of the series. Highly recommended to all young fantasy fans! show less
Published in 1965, Over Sea, Under Stone is the first in Susan Cooper's five-volume Dark Is Rising fantasy sequence, and is a book show more that I read and reread (along with its sequels) countless times as a girl. I am rereading it now as part of a group read of the entire series that I am currently conducting with some friends, and I found it every bit as engrossing as ever I did. Cooper has a knack for making places come alive, and the small Cornish village of Trewissick is no exception. One feels as if one were right there with the children, making discovers and fleeing the enemy. Suspenseful, entertaining, utterly gripping—this is an almost perfect blend of the classic British holiday adventure story and a work of fantasy fiction. Of course the latter is rather oblique: we get the sense of the great cosmological struggle in the background, but it doesn't emerge fully until the second book in the series, The Dark Is Rising, which switches focus (and protagonists). Still, there is a powerful sense of menace here, created through Cooper's skillful writing and storytelling, and the reader races along for the conclusion. I finished this one eager to continue my reread of the series. Highly recommended to all young fantasy fans! show less
Simon, Jane and Barney Drew arrive in the Cornish village of Trewissick to stay in the Grey House with their Great Uncle Merry, a friend of their mother’s family. There was always something slightly mysterious about Uncle Merry:
Always, wherever he was, unusual things seemed to happen. He would often disappear for a long time, and then suddenly come through the Drews’ front door as if he had never been away, announcing that he had found a lost valley in South America, a Roman fortress in France, or a burned Viking ship buried on the English coast. The newspapers would publish enthusiastic stories of what he had done. But by the time the reporters came knocking at the door, Great-Uncle Merry would be gone, back to the dusty peace of show more the university where he taught. They would wake up one morning, go to call him for breakfast, and find that he was not there. And then they would hear no more of him until the next time, perhaps months later, that he appeared at the door.
While they are exploring the house on a rainy day the children discover a treasure map, one that’s hundreds of years’ old, that has been copied from a map that’s centuries older still. But once they start to follow the clues on the map they discover that darker forces are also looking for the Arthurian grail to which the map leads, and the children must stay one step ahead ...
A fairly straightforward adventure story, but a good one nonetheless. And one that involves the exploration of sea caves with the tide coming in, something which I’ve realised I find unduly frightening, and which definitely added to the sense of peril for me. (I was brought up by the sea in an area where people got cut off by the tide on a reasonably regular basis, and I think the maxim that you must be aware of the tide at all times was one which was clearly drilled into me at a very early age).
This is the first book in Susan Cooper’s ‘The Dark is Rising’ series. This is definitely a children’s book (I think the others in the series are YA), and I so wish I’d read this as a child as I would have loved it. show less
Always, wherever he was, unusual things seemed to happen. He would often disappear for a long time, and then suddenly come through the Drews’ front door as if he had never been away, announcing that he had found a lost valley in South America, a Roman fortress in France, or a burned Viking ship buried on the English coast. The newspapers would publish enthusiastic stories of what he had done. But by the time the reporters came knocking at the door, Great-Uncle Merry would be gone, back to the dusty peace of show more the university where he taught. They would wake up one morning, go to call him for breakfast, and find that he was not there. And then they would hear no more of him until the next time, perhaps months later, that he appeared at the door.
While they are exploring the house on a rainy day the children discover a treasure map, one that’s hundreds of years’ old, that has been copied from a map that’s centuries older still. But once they start to follow the clues on the map they discover that darker forces are also looking for the Arthurian grail to which the map leads, and the children must stay one step ahead ...
A fairly straightforward adventure story, but a good one nonetheless. And one that involves the exploration of sea caves with the tide coming in, something which I’ve realised I find unduly frightening, and which definitely added to the sense of peril for me. (I was brought up by the sea in an area where people got cut off by the tide on a reasonably regular basis, and I think the maxim that you must be aware of the tide at all times was one which was clearly drilled into me at a very early age).
This is the first book in Susan Cooper’s ‘The Dark is Rising’ series. This is definitely a children’s book (I think the others in the series are YA), and I so wish I’d read this as a child as I would have loved it. show less
My initial reaction was that this felt well-worn: a Lewisian family of British children, summering in Cornwall, find a mysterious passageway behind a wardrobe. However, my initial reaction was dead wrong. The characters here are exceedingly well-drawn. The Drew children are bratty, catty, prone to shortness of breath and leg cramps. They're incredibly real, something that's all-too-lacking in a lot of children's fantasy literature. Barney, the youngest, with an Arthurian obsession, is especially believable. The pacing of this novel is great to boot, suspenseful, scary, and includes an especially riveting chase scene. I can't wait to read the rest of this series.
A 1965 children’s fantasy book in which Magic can be seen as a metaphor for the enigmatic realm of adulthood, a frightening place of risk and danger and too much choice, into which one is best initiated by a fearfully wise, but kindly, wizard.
A child spies on a beloved adult, and sees something opaque:
“Great-Uncle Merry, coming back towards the car from the Grey House, had suddenly stopped in his tracks in the middle of the road. He was gazing down at the sea; and she realised that he had caught sight of the yacht. What startled her was the expression on his face. Standing there like a craggy towering statue, he was frowning, fierce and intense, almost as if he were looking and listening with sense other than his eyes and ears. He show more could never look frightened, she thought, but this was the nearest thing to it that she had ever seen. Cautious, startled, alarmed … what was the matter with him?” (7)
A child gets to be a hero for a brief, terrifying moment, and something crumbles from his vision of the world:
Barney follows the bidding of his older brother “secretly relieved to be able to accept commands. He felt he had had enough of being the lone hero that day to last him for years - so that his private dreams of solitary bold knights in shining armor would never be quite the same again.” (196) show less
A child spies on a beloved adult, and sees something opaque:
“Great-Uncle Merry, coming back towards the car from the Grey House, had suddenly stopped in his tracks in the middle of the road. He was gazing down at the sea; and she realised that he had caught sight of the yacht. What startled her was the expression on his face. Standing there like a craggy towering statue, he was frowning, fierce and intense, almost as if he were looking and listening with sense other than his eyes and ears. He show more could never look frightened, she thought, but this was the nearest thing to it that she had ever seen. Cautious, startled, alarmed … what was the matter with him?” (7)
A child gets to be a hero for a brief, terrifying moment, and something crumbles from his vision of the world:
Barney follows the bidding of his older brother “secretly relieved to be able to accept commands. He felt he had had enough of being the lone hero that day to last him for years - so that his private dreams of solitary bold knights in shining armor would never be quite the same again.” (196) show less
I heard some good things about this sequence and I was not disappointed. Actually I started reading The Dark is Rising first thinking that would be the first book in the sequence, but quickly realised it wasn't. Some reviewers have likened this to Lewis and Tolkien but this reminds me more of Enid Blyton, but Darker and dare I say better. You could have called this book the Coast of Adventure or the Cave of Adventure but in this case the baddies are a lot Darker than conventional crooks. It's written primarily for children but the Darker feel and Arthurian theme make it appealing for adults as well. A well written page turner that seems conventional at first, but then you realise there is something Darker under the surface of things
I missed The Dark Is Rising books when I was a kid, but listened to an episode of Backlisted devoted to them and thought they'd be worth a try. And indeed the first is good stuff – adventure very much at the scale of ordinary children, with their secret concerns and perils and feeling of a much larger world of adults they don't understand. Fascinating to see what children in the 1960s carried in their pockets: string, a candle stub, thread, matches all apparently quite commonplace (but very lucky if you needed to explore a secret cave).
Perhaps a touch slow in its reveals (or maybe I'm just reading a book as an adult written for children) and a smidge anticlimactic--not in the climax of the events but rather in the sense that we don't actually learn a lot about all the secrets that have been bandied about throughout the book. It's an adventure story, not a discover the truth about a bunch of mythology story, so I reckon I ought not grumble that there were in fact Cheerios in the Cheerios box. But despite these minor quibbles, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this book (Cooper does an excellent job creating place (Cornwall) and atmosphere, and her ability to ratchet suspense is quite nice). ~ Dec 2023
In this young adult novel, three children staying in Cornwall for show more their summer holidays discover a manuscript which leads them to the Holy Grail. Their great uncle Merry helps and protects them in their quest, and they must avoid the dangerous "enemies" who seek the grail for their own evil purposes. Well-written and nicely atmospheric. A fun, sometimes cozy, sometimes creepy read with a fair amount of real adventure. Perhaps a bit anti-climactic with regards to the identity of the enemies and the importance of the grail. But I scampered to the library to snatch up the rest of the sequence before even finishing this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Cooper carries on with this story.
~ Sept 2011 show less
In this young adult novel, three children staying in Cornwall for show more their summer holidays discover a manuscript which leads them to the Holy Grail. Their great uncle Merry helps and protects them in their quest, and they must avoid the dangerous "enemies" who seek the grail for their own evil purposes. Well-written and nicely atmospheric. A fun, sometimes cozy, sometimes creepy read with a fair amount of real adventure. Perhaps a bit anti-climactic with regards to the identity of the enemies and the importance of the grail. But I scampered to the library to snatch up the rest of the sequence before even finishing this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Cooper carries on with this story.
~ Sept 2011 show less
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The story, which starts slowly, becomes more compelling as the supernatural starts to take over, although the mystic powers never reach the terrifying proportions they should have, and the ending, necessarily ambiguous, seems uncomfortably contrived.
added by rretzler
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Group read - Over Sea, Under Stone in 75 Books Challenge for 2009 (December 2009)
Book Discussion: Over Sea, Under Stone in The Green Dragon (February 2007)
Author Information
41+ Works 44,961 Members
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 London's The Sunday Times as a reporter on the show more 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) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Bevor die Flut kommt
- Original title
- Over Sea, Under Stone
- Original publication date
- 1965
- People/Characters
- Merriman Lyon (Great-uncle Merry, Gumerry); Barnabas Drew (Barney); Jane Drew; Simon Drew; Dick Drew (doctor); Ellen Drew (painter) (show all 14); Bill Hoover; the Black Rider (Hastings); Molly Palk; Mr. Penhallow; Rufus (dog, Irish setter); Norman Withers; Polly Withers; Merlin
- Important places
- Trewissick, Cornwall, England, UK (Based on Mevagissey); Cornwall, England, UK
- Related movies
- The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For my mother and father, with love
- First words
- "Where is he?"
Barney hopped from one foot to the other as he clambered down from the train, peering in vain through the white-faced crowds flooding eagerly to the St Austell ticket barrier. "Oh, I can't see him. Is he... (show all) there?" - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I think we shall know," he said slowly, "one day."
- Original language
- English
- Disambiguation notice
- This LT work, Over Sea, Under Stone, is Book 1 (of 5 Books) in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence. Please distinguish it from other single titles in the series, and from any combination(s) of part or al... (show all)l of the series. Thank you.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Fiction and Literature, Fantasy, Tween, Kids
- DDC/MDS
- 823.914 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PZ7 .C7878 .O — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
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