After the book Greenwitch (1974), Cooper penned the Newbery Medal-winner The Grey King. The second novel, The Dark Is Rising (1973), was chosen as a 1974 Newbery Honor Book and won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. British and Welsh mythology and King Arthur legends figure prominently throughout. The five-book sequence features ordinary and supernatural characters involved in an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil.

When marriage to an American scientist brought her to Massachusetts in 1963, she helped ease her homesickness by writing columns about her new country for publication back in England.Ĭooper entered the juvenile literature scene in 1965 with Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in what became her popular The Dark Is Rising fantasy-adventure series. Interested in journalism, she became the first female editor of Oxford’s student newspaper, Cherwell, and landed a job with London’s Sunday Times after graduation. She attended Oxford University on a scholarship and had fantasy-fiction writers C.S. Cooper also composed picture books for small children, adult fiction and nonfiction, short stories, newspaper pieces, and screenplays.Ĭooper was born on May 23, 1935, in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England.

British-born American author Susan Cooper was perhaps best known for her fantasy novels for young adults, one of which- The Grey King (1975)-won the 1976 Newbery Medal.

Green Boy by Susan Cooper