Episode 133 - Greenwitch, by Susan Cooper

We’re celebrating Halloween with a return to the icons that started it all: Celtic witch effigies! Greenwitch continues the exquisite Dark is Rising Sequence by throwing us for a weird, wonderful loop - forget the big stakes Light vs. Dark battle, let’s narrow in on a wayward angry painter and a spring holiday in Trewissick. The Drew children and Will Stanton meet, solve a dognapping, and get into mind-altering yet somehow still relatively low-key exploits, all while Cooper’s gorgeous prose draws us further into this ancient seaside mystery. We’re throwing an all-night crafting party - join us!

*Note - some listeners have expressed frustration with a few of our especially meandering book summaries and if you are one of them, this episode is probably not for you! This book is dreamlike and so are we!!

Related Episodes:

• Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

• Well Wished by Franny Billingsley

• House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

Episode 132 - Well Wished, by Franny Billingsley

Franny Billingsley’s debut novel Well Wished is alternately eerie and joyful, filled with natural wonder and existential dread. The residents of Bishop Mayne live under their cruel wishing well’s thrall… but why?? We discuss the realistic childhood friendship at the center of the book, shifting from friend to foe as they swap bodies (and one refuses to return). We’re meeting up with Nuria and Catty in Lace Dappled Grove, join us!

Other episodes mentioned:

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley

My Enduring Obsession with The Snow Queen (Grace's Reading Corner)

Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre

Episode 131 - Mariel of Redwall, by Brian Jacques

Down with Pirate King Gabool, up with prophetic bells! We’re covering Mariel of Redwall, by Brian Jacques. Although this is our third episode on a Redwall book, we still have a significant amount of puzzling to do over the relative size of things, the meaning of different creatures’ dialects, badger supremacy and the greensap milk of it all. Enter badger Bloodwrath mode and join us!

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Madeleine’s Rawnblade art

Brian Jacques pronouncing his name

Role of Dialects in the Redwall Series by Lauren Votava

The Jaws NES memory prompted by the excessive number of searat pirate ships

Episode 130 - Bloodmarked, by Tracy Deonn

We’re continuing Bree’s fraught journey through the Legendborn world with Bloodmarked! Tracy Deonn’s followup to Legendborn takes Bree far from UNC and the Arthurian Order and into her ancestors’ other magical communities. There are so many hot magical boys and SO MUCH PLOT and by the end we need an aether shot at The Crossroads. We debate cambion morality, where we’d make edits and the dramatic change in narrative scope and setting from the first book. #justiceforselwyn

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Cover artist Hillary D. Wilson’s other gorgeous work

Other episodes mentioned:

• Tamsin, by Peter S. Beagle

• The Ragwitch, by Garth Nix

• Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

Episode 129 - Gone-Away Lake, by Elizabeth Enright

We’re spending the summer at Gone-Away Lake! Elizabeth Enright’s classic story of creating your own adventure is rich with wish-fulfillment fantasy. Enright brings cousins Portia, Julian and Foster to life as they tromp through swampland, evade the Gulper and befriend Min and Pin, kindly siblings living out of time. We discuss the decline of American aristocracy, summer’s sweet melancholy, and the complex memories Gone-Away evokes. Casual children’s adventure story stuff!

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Some of Beth and Joe Krush’s wonderful illustrations: