The Weirdstone of Brisingamen does not begin with its two children. It begins with a legend. A farmer rides over Alderley Edge with a white mare to sell. An old man stops him on the path and says nobody will buy her, and that he will be waiting at sunset. He is right.<\/p>\n
That legend is four pages long and it is the best possible way in, because everything that follows is the legend refusing to stay a legend.<\/p>\n
Colin and Susan have been sent to a Cheshire farm for six months while their parents are abroad. They are looked after by Gowther and Bess Mossock, who are warm and solid and entirely unbothered. Gowther tells them to enjoy themselves up on the Edge and to keep out of the old copper mines, because the hill is riddled with shafts and if you get lost down there you don’t come back.<\/p>\n
For a while it really is just a good holiday. Beech woods, a view to the Pennines, a stone trough with a carved face above it and a rhyme about the wizard’s will.<\/p>\n
Then a woman stops her car on the road, tells them to get in, and starts whispering in Latin when they refuse.<\/p>\n
Garner doesn’t explain. He never tells your reader how to feel about something, which is why the frightening parts land so hard. The crystal on Susan’s wrist clouds over at the exact moment Colin’s fingers find the car door handle, and nobody in the book remarks on it.<\/p>\n
Two honest warnings. First, this is written for a confident reader and it is sixty-odd years old. Gowther speaks broad Cheshire on the page, all “dunner” and “theer” and “mun”, and some children love that and some bounce straight off it. Try reading a page of his aloud before you commit. Second, the names come thick and strange from the start, and there is no glossary.<\/p>\n
If your reader can take that, what they get is a chase. Real places with real names, a hill they could actually visit, and something underneath it that is a lot older than anyone in Cheshire. It’s more frightening than most fantasy written for children now, in a cold and matter-of-fact way rather than a gory one.<\/p>\n
It won the Carnegie Medal, and you can feel exactly why. It also feels like a book that trusts an eleven year old completely, which is rarer.<\/p>\n
If the pull is a door opening in an ordinary city afternoon rather than on a hill, try Alan Garner’s Elidor. Four children in Manchester, bored and skint, spin a street-map wheel for something to do and pick a street they have never heard of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen does not begin with its two children. It begins with a legend. A farmer rides over Alderley Edge with a white mare to sell. An old man stops him on the path and says nobody will buy her, and that he will be waiting at sunset. He is right. That legend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10649,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7318,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Alan Garner's Elidor","lr_seo_hook":"Two children, an old Cheshire hill and something hunting them on it."},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[28],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[55],"class_list":["post-9513","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-11-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-alan-garner"],"yoast_title":"The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Two children, an old Cheshire hill and something hunting them on it. For ages 11+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n