TDiR Readalong: Over Sea Under Stone, Chapter 1
Welcome to The Dark is Rising Sequence Readalong!
Okay, so I'm not as cool as Mark of Mark Reads, but I thought I'd do a discussion entry with my reactions and such in a manner similar to his. Sadly, this doesn't have as much keysmash and capslock as I'd like, but JUST YOU WAIT. It's The Dark is Rising Sequence. I'll get there.
So, I've recapped the chapter of the week, adding my thoughts along the way. At the end of each chapter, I'll add some general thoughts, followed by discussion questions both deep and shallow. No one is obligated to answer any of them, but of course I welcome discussion! And you can add your own discussion questions and reactions too. I WELCOME ANY AND ALL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.
And now the adventures of two boys, a girl, their mysterious archaeologist great-uncle, a dog, and an evil yacht.
Dydh da!
That's hello in Cornish, because this book is set in Cornwall, and I find it necessary to explore new languages whenever possible. Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language, which means it's related to Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, and Manx. I'm sure everyone cares.
Out of curiosity, which cover is everyone reading with? I'm reading with this one, only minus the audiobook text.
Right. So. Let's begin!
Chapter One opens with our intrepid young heroes--Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew--awaiting the arrival of their Great-Uncle Merry at the train station, along with their parents. The Drew family is about to spend a few weeks at the seaside in Trewissick, and Cooper captures well the impatient anticipation of children on holiday.
It's fitting that the first story of The Dark is Rising Sequence begins with waiting for Merriman Lyon, as he's such a central figure to the series that one could say he's emblematic of it. We'll meet him in a minute, though. First, the children have another new friend to encounter:
Then they saw that the suitcase had two brown, pricked ears and a long waving brown tail. Its owner picked it up and moved away, and the dog which had been beside it was left standing there alone, looking up and down the platform. He was a long, rangy, lean dog, and where the sunlight shafted down on his coat it gleamed dark red.
One should always hesitate to judge an author's preferences based on how they write, but I do get the impression from her description of Rufus that Cooper loves dogs. It's quite sweet, the way the children gravitate towards Rufus, even if it does fall into your standard set of tropes for a holiday story.
Once Jane discovers that Rufus the dog lives in Trewissick and thus will be spending time with them, the long-awaited Great-Uncle Merry arrives:
Nobody knew much about Great-Uncle Merry, and nobody ever quite dared to ask. He did not look in the very least like his name. He was tall, and straight, with a lot of very thick, wild, white hair. In his grim brown face his nose curved fiercely, like a bent bow, and the eyes were deep-set and dark.
How old he was, nobody knew. "Old as the hills," Father said, and they felt, deep down, that this was probably right. There was something about Great-Uncle Merry that was like the hills, or the sea, or the sky; something ancient, but without age or end.
I love the contrast here between the mundane aspects of Drew family life and with with mysteriousness that is their Great-Uncle Merry. I especially like the way that Cooper stitches the two together so seamlessly without really calling too much attention to said contrast. After all, everyone has that relative or friend of the family who seems a bit larger than life. There's no guarantee that they are supernatural in nature, but they could be.
Given the closeness that Merriman shows to the children's mother, Ellen, I do wonder if Ellen now-Drew once got to go on adventures with him as a child. I also wonder how that may have affected Ellen's art--since we know from the text she's an artist. Here's an opportunity for female character development, if one were to do a decent movie adaptation. Not an entire backstory, but a subtle nod.
Of course, I like that as mysterious and ancient as Merriman is, he still has hilarious quirks like driving terrible old cars which totally freak out the Drew parents in that they look completely unsafe.
Merriman, you troll.
As they drive along in deathtrap car, along with Rufus the Dog who will be living with them (yay!) the children get their first glimpse of Cornwall. Merriman refers to it as the "real" Cornwall, and then calls it by Logres, its name in Arthurian legend. Barney, as we find out, is a complete and utter Arthurian fanboy. It's pretty adorable. The text tells us that he had been longing to come to the West Country; it gave him a strange feeling that he would in some ways be coming home.
I love this sentence because in so many ways I deeply relate to it. In fact, these books are part of why I relate to it. I have never been to Wales, or the British Isles in general, but it was through these stories that I first began to think about my Welsh roots. I know, when I finally do get to Wales, that I will be connecting with it as a reader of The Dark is Rising sequence. I know that makes me basically every other kid on the internet who loves these books, but there is something very unique about bonding with a place first via the written word. As I know from my love of L.M. Montgomery and my Prince Edward Island trip, it makes going there for real feel all the more like a pilgrimage.
The description of Cornwall as the "real" Cornwall brings up an aspect of Cooper's writing that I feel ambivalent about--the anxiety over remote and "authentic" places being turned into tourist traps. It's an anxiety I feel myself, at times, and it may be part of why I feel strange taking pictures of myself in the places where I travel, when I travel. In a way I feel like I want to see the place as it is, as it isn't my own. I think part of this anxiety does stem from literary wanderlust, in that we want to see a place as it was in a story, as we picture it in our heads.
On the other hand, the very idea of denoting some places as remote, and romanticizing them according to a literary model, speaks to a certain amount of geographic privilege. One has to see their own home as "central" to see other areas as remote, and we forget that to the people who inhabit these places, home is very central indeed. We forget that they live there and sometimes subsist off the tourist trade or sometimes subsist off of other, completely unromantic things entirely. These things may not jive with the stories in our heads, but at the same time we need to accept them.
Perhaps the best thing we can do is be aware of our geographical privilege, and be aware that, in whatever places we have come to love through stories, new stories are emerging on all the time, on the terms of the people who live there. And often times these stories are very interesting. This is something that Cooper does much better, in my opinion, as the series goes on, and it pretty much culminates in the character of Bran Davies. But I'll hold off from talking about Bran now, because dear god when I get started talking about Bran, I don't stop.
So here we are in Trewissick--a bunch of sleepy cottages by the sea and boats upon a harbor. Cooper skillfully blends the mundane and the fantastic again, writing they could smell a strangeness in the breeze that blew faintly on their faces down the hill; a beckoning smell of salt and seaweed and excitement. I think a lot of people forget just how magical being out of school is, for young children, and thus miss that particular subtext of children's fantasy novels. But it's definitely there.
The Drews leave the car, and make their way to the Grey House, where they'll be staying. Simon notices a pretty yacht and fanboys it forever to the sound of Jane not caring, proving that Simon's a bit of a yuppie-in-training. I mean, I love Simon anyway, but he does tend to get that way at times.
Jane forgets her handkerchief, and heads back to Merriman's car, earning a moment to herself. Since this is Jane on her own, let's take a moment to consider Jane as a character.
I'll be focusing a lot on Jane Drew as I work my way through the sequence, as she's one of its most prominent female characters. Her characterization, however, can be hard to pin down at times, especially with the boys in the series being so vocal about their wants and needs. So far, we know that Barney likes Arthurian legend and Simon has nautical interests, while Jane takes note of practical things like handkerchiefs. Also, while all the children displayed interest in Rufus, Jane was the one who stayed long enough to discover his name and town of origin. There's a nurturing side to her that comes out there, a concern for others.
Alone in the car, Jane catches sight of Merriman off on his own, staring at the yacht. The paragraph focuses on Merriman, but we get insight into Jane's feelings as she watches:
He was gazing at the sea; and she realized 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, as if he were looking and listening with senses other than his eyes and ears. He 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? Was there something strange about the yacht?
EEEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIL YAAAAAAACHT. You can tell it's evil because, seriously, what kind of spelling is yacht?
Back to the narrative, though, this is one of the things Jane does throughout the series. She does a lot of people watching and can be pretty intuitive as to what's going on with them, even if she doesn't fully understand it due to the supernatural nature of their being. In a way, it's her concern for others that motivates her.
I don't mind that Jane is practical and nurturing and emotionally intuitive, and that these are stereotypically feminine traits. After all, many women display stereotypically feminine traits. It is a little troubling that she's the one girl in the series and she gets relegated to the role of The Chick. On the other hand, Cooper doesn't pull out the same suspicion of anything OMG ADVENTURE-RUINING GIRLY STUFF EW that CS Lewis and other authors can. (Sure, Simon makes comments like "ugh, girls!" from time to time, but as we've already established, Simon can be The Man at times.) Jane's feminine-coded strengths and concern for others even work to everyone's benefit in Greenwitch... but that's another book and I won't get ahead of myself. So I'll hold onto these thoughts as we continue with the book!
On a final Jane-related note, I do sometimes wonder how much of Jane's characterization also comes from her being the middle child as well as the token girl. Simon is the oldest and therefore practical in a leadership sort of way, and very driven. He can be protective. Barney is the baby of their family and therefore still gets attention from their mother, and seemed to inherit/get nurtured into a sort of artist type. As the middle child, Jane has to work harder to self-define and probably gets overshadowed by the boys a lot, even in daily life. If I were to adapt the books, I'd probably make this more explicit--that Jane doesn't necessarily know what she wants in life and is struggling to be noticed among her brothers, but it's also difficult for her, given her more introverted personality.
Anyway, the Drew children then spend a little bit of time playing around the harbor. Simon fanboys the yacht again, and teases Jane when she starts to feel seasick. Jane runs away, only to run smack into an EEEEEVIIIIIL CHILD ON A BIKE. Seriously, that's the best way to describe Bill Hoover, he's just a cranky kid with a bike. Simon tries to pick a fight with Bill out of a sense of chivalry/chauvanism, though Jane holds him back, and ultimately he gets away, muttering a few blanked out swear words as he goes. Sometimes I wish Simon had been written as a girl, too, but with all the other Simon things intact.
Bill Hoover, and the other Cornish characters the children meet up with afterwards, speak in transliterated Cornish dialect. And, personal preference time, but ugh, written out dialect makes my eyes bleed. I know it was convention at the time, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. If I remember correctly, Cooper eschews that in her later books. Thank goodness.
Though, for those of you who are wondering, apparently stereotypical pirate dialect is modeled on Cornish dialect? So now everyone talks like parrots in my head. Arrr, matey!
After their encounter will Bill Hoover, the children talk to Mr. Penhallow, a fisherman who tells them a bit about, well, fishing on Cornwall, and also that it's going to rain tomorrow. Barney points out that he's probably right, as Cornish fishermen KNOW STUFF. I like that Cooper puts this in Barney's mouth instead of the narrator's--Lewis would have given it to the narrator and I would have thrown the book across the room like, who made you the authority on this stuff? There is some romanticizing of both Mr. Penhallow and Mrs. Palk, the housekeeper who helps the Drews with chores at the Grey House, and it feels a little classist, but it could be worse?
Oh man Mrs. Palk makes the kids Cornish pasties. Now I want the veggie version of Cornish pasties from the Moosewood cookbooks. SO GOOD.
On a final note, we end the chapter with the revelation that Great-Uncle Merry slipped out on the family again, like he has a tendency to do. Simon's all, "whatever yo, archaeology!" but Jane feels a sense of foreboding and stares out the window at the EEEEEEEVIIIIIL YAAAAAACHT again. What will happen next?
Some overall thoughts on the first chapter:
-As stated above, I think one of the best things Cooper does is mixing the mundane and the fantastic. Many things could be read more than one way--Merriman is interesting because he's unconventional, or because there's something supernatural about him. But, because the viewpoint characters are open to fantastical experiences, they tend to accept both ideas at the same time. In fact, the ideas are linked. One could say that Jane, Simon, and Barney are open to fantastical experience because they're children, but I think that's an oversimplification and we'll definitely see that subverted later on.
-In many way, Cooper walks in the footsteps of her predecessors, like CS Lewis and Edith Nesbit. She uses the same tropes of children on holiday, with a dog, about to discover something big. I like how laid-back her narration style is in comparison, though. Lewis and Nesbit, much as I love them, opine a LOT, and occasionally say things that make me go into a blind rage. Nesbit, for instance, has a lengthy paragraph on how the country makes children good, even if they get into mischief, but the mischief city children get into in comparison to the kind country children get into is much, MUCH worse. Yeah, try reading a statement today about the inborn wickedness of "urban" children. If Cooper has opinions, it's hard to tell, but they're probably in the mouths of her characters.
And some discussion questions for the chapter:
-What do you make of the way Cooper sets up the characters? Any strong character likes or dislikes?
-Can you think of other books that this one reminds you of? What tropes stay the same? Which change? What makes Cooper unique to you?
-Has the book touched upon the idea of good and evil yet? How are good and evil characterized?
-Should we do more than one chapter per week? I think for this book, especially, that may be a good idea. The chapters are short and easy enough to read that I think going more quickly may be a good thing.
And for shallowness's sake:
-Let's start sorting everyone into Hogwarts houses!
-How cute is Rufus? Ten points to the Hogwarts house of anyone who manages to find a picture of a cute puppy matching Rufus's description. This is the internet. We live for cute animals.
Staring tomorrow, we'll be reading chapter 2, and maybe chapter 3. Can everyone weigh in on whether or not they'd be willing to read two chapters a week? I'm up for it!
Okay, so I'm not as cool as Mark of Mark Reads, but I thought I'd do a discussion entry with my reactions and such in a manner similar to his. Sadly, this doesn't have as much keysmash and capslock as I'd like, but JUST YOU WAIT. It's The Dark is Rising Sequence. I'll get there.
So, I've recapped the chapter of the week, adding my thoughts along the way. At the end of each chapter, I'll add some general thoughts, followed by discussion questions both deep and shallow. No one is obligated to answer any of them, but of course I welcome discussion! And you can add your own discussion questions and reactions too. I WELCOME ANY AND ALL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.
And now the adventures of two boys, a girl, their mysterious archaeologist great-uncle, a dog, and an evil yacht.
Dydh da!
That's hello in Cornish, because this book is set in Cornwall, and I find it necessary to explore new languages whenever possible. Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language, which means it's related to Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, and Manx. I'm sure everyone cares.
Out of curiosity, which cover is everyone reading with? I'm reading with this one, only minus the audiobook text.
Right. So. Let's begin!
Chapter One opens with our intrepid young heroes--Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew--awaiting the arrival of their Great-Uncle Merry at the train station, along with their parents. The Drew family is about to spend a few weeks at the seaside in Trewissick, and Cooper captures well the impatient anticipation of children on holiday.
It's fitting that the first story of The Dark is Rising Sequence begins with waiting for Merriman Lyon, as he's such a central figure to the series that one could say he's emblematic of it. We'll meet him in a minute, though. First, the children have another new friend to encounter:
Then they saw that the suitcase had two brown, pricked ears and a long waving brown tail. Its owner picked it up and moved away, and the dog which had been beside it was left standing there alone, looking up and down the platform. He was a long, rangy, lean dog, and where the sunlight shafted down on his coat it gleamed dark red.
One should always hesitate to judge an author's preferences based on how they write, but I do get the impression from her description of Rufus that Cooper loves dogs. It's quite sweet, the way the children gravitate towards Rufus, even if it does fall into your standard set of tropes for a holiday story.
Once Jane discovers that Rufus the dog lives in Trewissick and thus will be spending time with them, the long-awaited Great-Uncle Merry arrives:
Nobody knew much about Great-Uncle Merry, and nobody ever quite dared to ask. He did not look in the very least like his name. He was tall, and straight, with a lot of very thick, wild, white hair. In his grim brown face his nose curved fiercely, like a bent bow, and the eyes were deep-set and dark.
How old he was, nobody knew. "Old as the hills," Father said, and they felt, deep down, that this was probably right. There was something about Great-Uncle Merry that was like the hills, or the sea, or the sky; something ancient, but without age or end.
I love the contrast here between the mundane aspects of Drew family life and with with mysteriousness that is their Great-Uncle Merry. I especially like the way that Cooper stitches the two together so seamlessly without really calling too much attention to said contrast. After all, everyone has that relative or friend of the family who seems a bit larger than life. There's no guarantee that they are supernatural in nature, but they could be.
Given the closeness that Merriman shows to the children's mother, Ellen, I do wonder if Ellen now-Drew once got to go on adventures with him as a child. I also wonder how that may have affected Ellen's art--since we know from the text she's an artist. Here's an opportunity for female character development, if one were to do a decent movie adaptation. Not an entire backstory, but a subtle nod.
Of course, I like that as mysterious and ancient as Merriman is, he still has hilarious quirks like driving terrible old cars which totally freak out the Drew parents in that they look completely unsafe.
Merriman, you troll.
As they drive along in deathtrap car, along with Rufus the Dog who will be living with them (yay!) the children get their first glimpse of Cornwall. Merriman refers to it as the "real" Cornwall, and then calls it by Logres, its name in Arthurian legend. Barney, as we find out, is a complete and utter Arthurian fanboy. It's pretty adorable. The text tells us that he had been longing to come to the West Country; it gave him a strange feeling that he would in some ways be coming home.
I love this sentence because in so many ways I deeply relate to it. In fact, these books are part of why I relate to it. I have never been to Wales, or the British Isles in general, but it was through these stories that I first began to think about my Welsh roots. I know, when I finally do get to Wales, that I will be connecting with it as a reader of The Dark is Rising sequence. I know that makes me basically every other kid on the internet who loves these books, but there is something very unique about bonding with a place first via the written word. As I know from my love of L.M. Montgomery and my Prince Edward Island trip, it makes going there for real feel all the more like a pilgrimage.
The description of Cornwall as the "real" Cornwall brings up an aspect of Cooper's writing that I feel ambivalent about--the anxiety over remote and "authentic" places being turned into tourist traps. It's an anxiety I feel myself, at times, and it may be part of why I feel strange taking pictures of myself in the places where I travel, when I travel. In a way I feel like I want to see the place as it is, as it isn't my own. I think part of this anxiety does stem from literary wanderlust, in that we want to see a place as it was in a story, as we picture it in our heads.
On the other hand, the very idea of denoting some places as remote, and romanticizing them according to a literary model, speaks to a certain amount of geographic privilege. One has to see their own home as "central" to see other areas as remote, and we forget that to the people who inhabit these places, home is very central indeed. We forget that they live there and sometimes subsist off the tourist trade or sometimes subsist off of other, completely unromantic things entirely. These things may not jive with the stories in our heads, but at the same time we need to accept them.
Perhaps the best thing we can do is be aware of our geographical privilege, and be aware that, in whatever places we have come to love through stories, new stories are emerging on all the time, on the terms of the people who live there. And often times these stories are very interesting. This is something that Cooper does much better, in my opinion, as the series goes on, and it pretty much culminates in the character of Bran Davies. But I'll hold off from talking about Bran now, because dear god when I get started talking about Bran, I don't stop.
So here we are in Trewissick--a bunch of sleepy cottages by the sea and boats upon a harbor. Cooper skillfully blends the mundane and the fantastic again, writing they could smell a strangeness in the breeze that blew faintly on their faces down the hill; a beckoning smell of salt and seaweed and excitement. I think a lot of people forget just how magical being out of school is, for young children, and thus miss that particular subtext of children's fantasy novels. But it's definitely there.
The Drews leave the car, and make their way to the Grey House, where they'll be staying. Simon notices a pretty yacht and fanboys it forever to the sound of Jane not caring, proving that Simon's a bit of a yuppie-in-training. I mean, I love Simon anyway, but he does tend to get that way at times.
Jane forgets her handkerchief, and heads back to Merriman's car, earning a moment to herself. Since this is Jane on her own, let's take a moment to consider Jane as a character.
I'll be focusing a lot on Jane Drew as I work my way through the sequence, as she's one of its most prominent female characters. Her characterization, however, can be hard to pin down at times, especially with the boys in the series being so vocal about their wants and needs. So far, we know that Barney likes Arthurian legend and Simon has nautical interests, while Jane takes note of practical things like handkerchiefs. Also, while all the children displayed interest in Rufus, Jane was the one who stayed long enough to discover his name and town of origin. There's a nurturing side to her that comes out there, a concern for others.
Alone in the car, Jane catches sight of Merriman off on his own, staring at the yacht. The paragraph focuses on Merriman, but we get insight into Jane's feelings as she watches:
He was gazing at the sea; and she realized 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, as if he were looking and listening with senses other than his eyes and ears. He 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? Was there something strange about the yacht?
EEEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIL YAAAAAAACHT. You can tell it's evil because, seriously, what kind of spelling is yacht?
Back to the narrative, though, this is one of the things Jane does throughout the series. She does a lot of people watching and can be pretty intuitive as to what's going on with them, even if she doesn't fully understand it due to the supernatural nature of their being. In a way, it's her concern for others that motivates her.
I don't mind that Jane is practical and nurturing and emotionally intuitive, and that these are stereotypically feminine traits. After all, many women display stereotypically feminine traits. It is a little troubling that she's the one girl in the series and she gets relegated to the role of The Chick. On the other hand, Cooper doesn't pull out the same suspicion of anything OMG ADVENTURE-RUINING GIRLY STUFF EW that CS Lewis and other authors can. (Sure, Simon makes comments like "ugh, girls!" from time to time, but as we've already established, Simon can be The Man at times.) Jane's feminine-coded strengths and concern for others even work to everyone's benefit in Greenwitch... but that's another book and I won't get ahead of myself. So I'll hold onto these thoughts as we continue with the book!
On a final Jane-related note, I do sometimes wonder how much of Jane's characterization also comes from her being the middle child as well as the token girl. Simon is the oldest and therefore practical in a leadership sort of way, and very driven. He can be protective. Barney is the baby of their family and therefore still gets attention from their mother, and seemed to inherit/get nurtured into a sort of artist type. As the middle child, Jane has to work harder to self-define and probably gets overshadowed by the boys a lot, even in daily life. If I were to adapt the books, I'd probably make this more explicit--that Jane doesn't necessarily know what she wants in life and is struggling to be noticed among her brothers, but it's also difficult for her, given her more introverted personality.
Anyway, the Drew children then spend a little bit of time playing around the harbor. Simon fanboys the yacht again, and teases Jane when she starts to feel seasick. Jane runs away, only to run smack into an EEEEEVIIIIIL CHILD ON A BIKE. Seriously, that's the best way to describe Bill Hoover, he's just a cranky kid with a bike. Simon tries to pick a fight with Bill out of a sense of chivalry/chauvanism, though Jane holds him back, and ultimately he gets away, muttering a few blanked out swear words as he goes. Sometimes I wish Simon had been written as a girl, too, but with all the other Simon things intact.
Bill Hoover, and the other Cornish characters the children meet up with afterwards, speak in transliterated Cornish dialect. And, personal preference time, but ugh, written out dialect makes my eyes bleed. I know it was convention at the time, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. If I remember correctly, Cooper eschews that in her later books. Thank goodness.
Though, for those of you who are wondering, apparently stereotypical pirate dialect is modeled on Cornish dialect? So now everyone talks like parrots in my head. Arrr, matey!
After their encounter will Bill Hoover, the children talk to Mr. Penhallow, a fisherman who tells them a bit about, well, fishing on Cornwall, and also that it's going to rain tomorrow. Barney points out that he's probably right, as Cornish fishermen KNOW STUFF. I like that Cooper puts this in Barney's mouth instead of the narrator's--Lewis would have given it to the narrator and I would have thrown the book across the room like, who made you the authority on this stuff? There is some romanticizing of both Mr. Penhallow and Mrs. Palk, the housekeeper who helps the Drews with chores at the Grey House, and it feels a little classist, but it could be worse?
Oh man Mrs. Palk makes the kids Cornish pasties. Now I want the veggie version of Cornish pasties from the Moosewood cookbooks. SO GOOD.
On a final note, we end the chapter with the revelation that Great-Uncle Merry slipped out on the family again, like he has a tendency to do. Simon's all, "whatever yo, archaeology!" but Jane feels a sense of foreboding and stares out the window at the EEEEEEEVIIIIIL YAAAAAACHT again. What will happen next?
Some overall thoughts on the first chapter:
-As stated above, I think one of the best things Cooper does is mixing the mundane and the fantastic. Many things could be read more than one way--Merriman is interesting because he's unconventional, or because there's something supernatural about him. But, because the viewpoint characters are open to fantastical experiences, they tend to accept both ideas at the same time. In fact, the ideas are linked. One could say that Jane, Simon, and Barney are open to fantastical experience because they're children, but I think that's an oversimplification and we'll definitely see that subverted later on.
-In many way, Cooper walks in the footsteps of her predecessors, like CS Lewis and Edith Nesbit. She uses the same tropes of children on holiday, with a dog, about to discover something big. I like how laid-back her narration style is in comparison, though. Lewis and Nesbit, much as I love them, opine a LOT, and occasionally say things that make me go into a blind rage. Nesbit, for instance, has a lengthy paragraph on how the country makes children good, even if they get into mischief, but the mischief city children get into in comparison to the kind country children get into is much, MUCH worse. Yeah, try reading a statement today about the inborn wickedness of "urban" children. If Cooper has opinions, it's hard to tell, but they're probably in the mouths of her characters.
And some discussion questions for the chapter:
-What do you make of the way Cooper sets up the characters? Any strong character likes or dislikes?
-Can you think of other books that this one reminds you of? What tropes stay the same? Which change? What makes Cooper unique to you?
-Has the book touched upon the idea of good and evil yet? How are good and evil characterized?
-Should we do more than one chapter per week? I think for this book, especially, that may be a good idea. The chapters are short and easy enough to read that I think going more quickly may be a good thing.
And for shallowness's sake:
-Let's start sorting everyone into Hogwarts houses!
-How cute is Rufus? Ten points to the Hogwarts house of anyone who manages to find a picture of a cute puppy matching Rufus's description. This is the internet. We live for cute animals.
Staring tomorrow, we'll be reading chapter 2, and maybe chapter 3. Can everyone weigh in on whether or not they'd be willing to read two chapters a week? I'm up for it!