Lemony Snicket

While fans of HP eagerly await any news that the fifth book of the series is coming (current projected release date is Summer 2002, with the working title of "HP & the Order of the Phoenix" - however, with the movie coming out, and minor spin-off books doing well, release date may easily be postponed), the latest craze in children's books are the "Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket. For more information, click on the link above.

L. Frank Baum

Ever wonder what happened after The Wizard of Oz? Why not find out more about this strange and wacky world, from this turn-of-the-century author.

The Oz Books
The Wizard of Oz
The Land of Oz
Ozma of Oz
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
The Road to Oz
The Emerald City of Oz
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Tik-Tok of Oz
The Scarecrow of Oz
Rinkitink in Oz
The Lost Princess of Oz
The Tin Woodman of Oz
The Magic of Oz
Glinda of Oz

Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Good/Harmless
Age Appropriateness: Child/Pre-Teen

Although there's frequently little in the way of plot, the Oz books, filled with strange creatures and stranger lands, are some of the best beloved books in children's fantastic literature. For the most part, the morals are good, or harmless, although some concern might be founded over Ozma of Oz, who had been turned into a boy for her own protections when she was a baby, and at the end of the book is turned back into a girl. His other books, however, have no such difficulties, and can generally be given freely to the more adventurous reader. Children who love the strangeness of Harry Potter gadgets - boys especially - will most likely love to jump into the Wonderful World of Oz!

American Fairy Tales

Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Excellent
Age Appropriateness: Child/Pre-Teen

And while you're at it, why not take a look at his original fairy tales - each with an excellent moral at the end!

Patricia Wrede

Multitalented Ms. Wrede is the author of several novels, from Sword and Sorcery to Alternate Reality. But she is perhaps best known and best beloved for her Enchanted Forest Chronicals.

Enchanted Forest Chronicals
Dealing With Dragons
Searching for Dragons
Calling on Dragons
Talking to Dragons

Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Harmless
Age Appropriateness: Child/Pre-Teen

Although these books feature sympathetic dragons, tomboy princesses and several other earmarks of "liberalistic" or "neopagan" fantasy, Wrede's books come off much more lightly in tone - and with a wink (to tease both the conventions, and the recent anti-conventions) which render these pleasant fast-moving books morally harmless, and a good remedy to Harry Potter mania.

Addendum: Since writing this, I've had the opportunity to reread these books and can joyfully recommend all of them. The morality is very good - marriage is promoted, as is honesty, courtesy, and other Christian virtues. Although all four work as an interwoven series, the best are undoubtedly the first three, which deal with the feisty Princess Cimeron (the fourth book deals with her son). Those who enjoy these books would also do well to read some of the other updated versions of fairytales.

Edward Eager

Mr. Eager began writing children's novels for his son, in the 1950's - but his work remains classic fun to this day!

Half Magic

Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Good/Harmless
Age Appropriateness: Child/Pre-Teen

What happens when four siblings find a magic coin - a magic coin that only grants half a wish? This charming tale questions that, as well as examining whether or not "magic" is needed to make "wishes" come true. A charming novel, appropriate for all!

Susan Cooper

Well beloved author of the Dark is Rising Series, Susan Cooper's name is often listed with Ursula K. LeGuin and Madeline L'Engle's. Our very own Anne Pelrine was kind enough to give us her thoughts on the childhood classics.

The Dark is Rising Sequence

Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Harmless/Dangerous
Age Appropriateness: Child/Pre-Teen

The Dark Is Rising was the first book of the Sequence that I read, although it's the second in line. I've read several books that have a similar idea. The whole thing is set in Great Britain, specifically England and Wales. In the fourth book, you get a brief lesson in Welsh pronunciations. Kinda fun. Will, the main character, finds that everything is going really wierd on the day before his eleventh birthday, people are telling him a lot of things that he's not sure how to handle, and animals are terrified of him. Essentially, he's being recognized as something he never knew he was. His eleventh birthday comes, and he discovers he's the last and youngest of a race of people called the Old Ones. In this respect, it kind of resembles the Harry Potter opening. Anyway, it turns out that Will belongs to the Light, and he has to fight the powers of the Dark. And there are many things that he has to find and use. His elder and mentor, Merriman, is interesting. He's one of the oldest Old Ones in existence and has to do a lot to help Will out. As a story, it's pretty good. Howsomever, you have to be careful on the morals. It's definitely a good vs. evil story, but it's iffy on recognizing God as the source of everything good. Also, the Light and the Dark are seen as two poles of one force, the Light being good and the Dark being evil. However, they're shown as having an equal chance to influence the course of human history. Yes, the Dark is shown as being a lying source that promises great rewards and then gyps people, but they're shown as having equal strength and chances when compared to the Light. So you have to be careful about that. Still, the story is, in my opinion, better than Harry Potter. It's more along the lines of J.R.R. Tolkien in terms of tone, funny in parts but with a more serious view.

The third book in the Dark Is Rising Sequence is entitled Greenwitch. The title alone might tell you that a lot of things that fall under the category of "magic" happen. Anyway, Will and Merriman are at it again, this time trying to get their hands on the chalice that was found in the first book and stolen by the Dark in this one. Merriman is the "uncle" of the three kids in the first book, and so the five of them (Merriman, Will, and the three Drew kids--Jane, Simon, and Barney) trapse off to Cornwall, England. The interesting thing about this whole sequence is that Will and Merriman find and meet Old Ones all over the place. There's an Old One in Cornwall. There, Merriman and Will go down into the sea to talk to Tethys, who is a goddess of some kind, so you kind of know you're not in Christianity anymore. Tethys gives them permission to talk to the Greenwitch--a figure made of rowan branches, seaweed, other stuff I don't recall, stuffed with rocks, and pitched into the sea--after touching it and making a wish--for good luck with the fishing for that year. Jane makes a wish for the Greenwitch and so befriends it. You can kind of guess how the rest of it goes. I'm probably going to wind up saying this a million times, but this sequence has a pretty good story-line. The problem is that good and evil are given equal footing. And it also seems that there is a third force or power that sometimes keeps the two sides "in check" or at least are not allied with either side. In the second book--the first one I read--you have Herne the Hunter and the Wild Hunt that chases and scatters the Dark for a while. In the third book you have Tethys and the Greenwitch and I think the forces of Old Magic that do not belong to any side and really don't care about the things that happen in the lives of men, nor do they try to harm men. So there's that to consider and sometimes avoid. To use myself as an example, I liked the stories. I liked the descriptions. I liked the characters. But I almost always had this voice in my head saying, Boy, this goes against the Church! Superstitions and magic pretty much abound. So you can enjoy the story, but you have to keep your wits about you.

The fourth book in the Dark Is Rising sequence, The Gray King. This book actually won a Newberry Award. And I can understand why. Out of the five books, this one has the best scenic, character, and action descriptions. This is also the one that teaches basic Welsh pronunciations. I've had so much fun with those myself, and my favorite word from that book is "bachen", which means--roughly--"boy". Anyway, this book starts out with Will Stanton beginning to surface from a battle with some kind of disease. He springs out of a feverish dream with the panicked expression, "I've forgotten it! I had to remember it! I forgot it!" What he'd forgotten was the rhyme that Annie and I were trying to piece together. It tells how the Light can gain what I'm going to call "artifacts", for lack of a better word, to help them beat the Dark once and for all. But no one listening knows this. The doctor attending him--back when doctors actually could make house calls even though technology was starting to make that harder--and his mother fear that Will's still not out of the woods yet, so they have him shipped to a farm owned by Will's mother's best friend. If you didn't catch that the first time, Will is sent to convalesce in Wales. The farm he's sent to is owned by his "Aunt" Jen Davies--or it might be Gen. This "aunt" is actually just a very good friend of Will's mother.

When Will arrives in Wales, he's picked up by one of his aunt's sons, Rhys. As they drive along, they have a flat tire on the Land Rover--a car that may give you an idea about the terrain of Wales if you haven't been there (as I haven't)--and have to stop to fix it. As Rhys is working, they are confronted by a really nasty neighbor of the Davies. His name is Caradog Pritchard, and he's not one of the Dark, but he could make a good member if he was offered. He and Rhys have a few, ahem, words and then Rhys and Will continue. As they drive along, Will sees a mountain with its peak shrouded in ragged clouds and suggests to Rhys that it means the weather will clear up. Rhys tells him that those clouds, what Rhys calls the Breath of the Gray King, mean that the weather is only going to get worse. As the mountain overshadows the land, so the theme overshadows the book. The Gray King is one of the greater Lords of the Dark and has been influencing things in Wales for a long time. And it's into this land that Will is going to convalesce. Can you say "set-up"?

So Will is wandering around the farm and the town that he's in. He visits various places around, and various things start to jog his memory. The verses that he forgot start coming back to him in pieces. This leads him to suspect that he's going to find an artifact for the Light in Wales. But he doesn't know how yet.

Back on the farm, Will wanders hither, thither, and yon, and is warned by John Rowlands, a farm worker, not to go beyond the farm boundaries because Caradog Pritchard's land is on the other side. So Will is busy wandering up a hill and having a hard enough time with it when he somehow falls and starts tumbling down the hill. Suddenly he's grabbed by the collar, looks into a dog's eyes, and suddenly remembers everything he'd forgotten. The funny thing is that the dog's eyes are silver, the color of the blind dog. But this dog can see fine.

So then Will meets this remarkable dog's even more remarkable owner. The dog is owned by a boy named Bran, a boy who is essentially an albino. The only difference is that Bran's eyes are golden-yellow. And since Will has his memory back, he recognizes Bran as the raven boy from his verses. Bran also tells Will that he's spoken to Merriman and realizes that he's necessary to the Light. No one, except for possibly Merriman, knows how necessary he actually is.

While all the problems between Will and the Gray King are going on, the problems of the regular people are cropping up. You see, the setting of the story is sheep-grazing land. One of the biggest threats to sheep ranches is a sheep dog going mad and attacking the herds. And sheep are dying. More specifically, Caradog's sheep are dying. And for some reason, which is in the book, Caradog has a special and virulent hatred for Bran and his dog, which is named Cafal BTW. Problem is that the Gray King has huge silver foxes that can assume any shape. The shape they commonly assume is Cafal's. Another problem is the weather. No rain in a long time = very dry fields and hills. As in dry as a tinder box. So there are a lot of problems that have to be dealt with in the mean time. If you read the verses that Will had to know, you'll see that I've given many hints here.

This book is excellent, at least as far as the descriptions and plottings go. But you keep running into the problem of the Light and Dark on an equal playing field. As Annie said in a previous posting, the Dark is described as being cold, void, and hateful. But the Light is also described as cold and willing to let the ends justify the means as long as it's all in the name of the greater good. You frequently run into all kinds of moral dilemmas all throughout the sequence. Anyone that can be easily influenced when it comes to beliefs should tread carefully and have a guardian angel reading with them. But it's not hard to see why this book earned a Newberry Award. Literarily, it is excellent. So with all the opinions and warnings I can give, it's still up to you to read it or not.

The last book in the Dark Is Rising Sequence is Silver on the Tree. You might guess that this book has all the answers that you've been trying to figure out from the rhymes on the first page or so in the book. And your guess would be right. This is the last part of the Sequence, so most of the loose threads have to be cut off and/or hemmed. All the major questions get answered, and those that aren't answered are seen as "part of life". Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen; we're in for a bumpy ride.

The book starts with Will's oldest brother, the one in the Royal Navy whose name I can't remember, being home on leave for a little while. Signs that the Dark is preparing for a major fight start popping up all over the place, even around his home. Will's brother even gives him [Will] a message from another Old One from Jamaica, I think, saying that the Old Ones there are ready. People start acting funny. Then we go back to Wales. Merriman shows up to take Will back to Wales, where they're supposed to meet up with Bran (from "The Gray King") as well as Jane, Simon, and Barney (from "Under Sea, Over Stone" and "Greenwitch"). There's going to be a meeting in Wales, as you might guess, and it's going to be big.

So Will, Merriman, Bran, Jane, Simon, and Barney wind up in Wales. Remember the rhymes? Those start coming true in Wales. For example, there are two lines after the second rhyme. They're in Welsh, but they say: The mountains are singing,/ and the Lady comes. This winds up happening. The part of the second rhyme that says: "When light to the Lost Land shall return..." comes into play. A lot of loose ends get tied up. King Arthur shows up, and the Pendragon has to stand trial before he's allowed to use his sword. In the trial, the ordinary man John Rowlands has to decide the Pendragon's fate. Everything works out and wraps up neatly. The story ends very nicely.

HOWEVER! And this is a big however. You keep smacking into the problem of good and evil being given an even chance. The basic tenet of good being stronger than evil--even when it doesn't seem like it--seems to be missing. There are all kinds of places where the "war" could have been lost tohe Dark if things had gone differently. God does not come into the story. I've said it a million times, I know, but this is not a story that follows the Church well at all. It's a good story, but you have to watch out for the morals and theology. Those whose faith is not strong or definite should read carefully. The theory that the powers of good have beaten evil but have left humanity on its own after having done their job is what I see at the end of the sequence. So if this is not a concern for people, I wish them happy reading. If it is, I bid them to read carefully.

J. K. Rowling

For a review of Harry Potter, please see the page devoted to various views on these controvertial books at Talking Potter. Also, take a second to look at Steven Greydanus' excellent comparison of C. S. Lewis's Narnia, Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and Rowling's Harry Potter at Magic, Middle-earth, Merlin, Muggles, and Meaning.

(c) 2000 - 2007
Updated 22 July, 2007
All Rights Held by the Author.
No part of these pages may be used or copied without express permission of the author.