The Dark Is Rising

In olden times, almost forgotten, I tutored others, mostly in Latin and English, and mostly thanks to my Latin teacher sending them my way.
Some of them were not much younger than me and after cramming we sometimes did stuff together, went downtown, played a board game or just talked about books or music.

One of them lent me the German translation of the book "The Dark Is Rising" by Susan Cooper and it quickly became a favorite of mine which I still love as a grownup.
For the longest time, I wasn't aware that it was the second book in a series of five - "The Dark Is Rising Sequence" -  simply because only this one had been translated into German. Back then, it was not as easy to get access to English books, you couldn't just go online and order something from a specialized book store or even from another country. Bookstores usually had a small shelf with English books because demand wasn't that high at the time (I'm talking late 70s to early 80s).

Then something terrible happened. I was playing with my little brother when the borrowed book got knocked behind the end of my couch bed facing the wall, it opened up during the fall, and the cover got stuck on the shelf standing there and ripped right off. This was a matter of seconds and although I tried to jump after it, the damage had already been done. You can imagine how horrified I was, not only as a book lover, but because the book wasn't mine (to this day, I don't understand how some of our library patrons handle our books without any respect to the fact they don't belong to them).

Easy, go to the bookstore and buy a new one, right? Not that easy. First of all, it meant I lost the money for almost a whole tutoring lesson which was a lot for me back then, and second, it was so terribly embarrassing having to tell my tutee what had happened, after all she had trusted me with what was one of her favorite books.

As cou can see, I still have the book and after having repaired it very badly back then, so I wouldn't lose the cover page, it finally came off again when I read it last year.
Do you wonder why I didn't get myself a new copy during the last 40-something years, for example when the other four were finally published here? It's the memory. I'm weird that way sometimes.
Also I got myself the English originals as well eventually.
Oh, and by the way, my tutee was very gracious about it, even saying I didn't have to buy her a new copy. I wonder where she is today.

Now you may also wonder why a publisher would only translate one book out of five, but - and I'm not alone in thinking this - this book doesn't necessarily need the others. One YouTuber said you could well read the second book first and then the first one which is kind of funny as originally the first book was supposed to be a stand-alone novel and was actually published eight years before the second one followed.
I have read "The Dark Is Rising" many times in the last 40 years, it's a regular Christmas re-read for me, but the other four not that often. They are fine, but they don't grab me the same way.

The books are about the fight between "the Light" and "the Dark", good versus evil, and they are inspired by the Arthur legend, Celtic and Norse mythology, and English folklore.
"The Dark Is Rising" is about Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son. On his 11th birthday, which is at winter solstice (which is the German title, by the way - "Wintersonnenwende"), he experiences strange and magical things. He can't understand them until he meets a stranger called Merriman Lyon (the name hints at Merlin - Merry Lion) and an old lady who explain to him that he is the last of the Old Ones, guardians of the Light, and that it is his task to collect the six parts of the "Circle of Signs", one of four magical talismans that the Light needs in its fight against the Dark.
Winter solstice being the darkest time of the year in the Northern hemisphere, it is the perfect time for the Dark to attack.

I always wished someone would have created these signs for real, I love the way they are described.
They all have the same shape, a circle with a cross in the center dividing it into four.
"When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone."

I have been thinking about the best way I could make one of my own, but haven't had the perfect idea yet.

Now please excuse me, I haven't finished the book yet for this year. Instead of reading it silently, I'm reading it to my cats.
It may take longer, but lately my brain tends to get distracted more easily. Too much is happening at the moment and I'm a natural overthinker, anyway. Do you also hate if you read a sentence five times and notice you still don't know what it says?
Reading aloud helps me with that and the cats seem to enjoy the sound of my voice, too. Der Dekan gets calmer, Gundel is purring, and if they fall asleep and miss something, I don't take that personally ;-)

Oh, a last note.
They turned the second book into a movie - The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. I was smart enough not to watch it, even before I read reviews, and oh boy, there are some really eloquent reviews about it out there (although there are of course a few people who don't think the movie is quite that bad and there are also people who think the book is boring *gasp*).