The Magic of the Kingdom
by C.J Busby
As a child, the world I lived in was a very medieval one. Trees had sprits, woods and rivers had their own magic, the night time might see the rising of the Wild Hunt, and it was always possible that just round the corner or through the other side of the woods you might slip into another world or another time. I talked to trees, caught glimpses of witches and elves, and was always holding any rock that even vaguely resembled a crystal up to the sun, in the hope that I might be bathed in magical powers. A good twenty years before Harry Potter hit the shelves, I was persuading my friends to run full tilt into walls in the hope that we might just burst through to Narnia on the other side. Mad? Well, maybe a little… all right, maybe a lot. I blame it on books.
It was not just J.R.R. Tolkein or C.S Lewis that fed my sense of old British myths and magic all around me. As a child I devoured The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but also Andrew Lang’s Fairy books in all their many colours. The magic crystal obsession is from the seventies comic Mandy and their Amazing Valda stories. Valda, for those who don’t remember her, was a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer crossed with H. Rider Haggard’s She.
It was probably Alan Garner’s books (Elidor, the Wierdstone of Brisingamen), and Susan Cooper’s (The Dark is Rising sequence), that did most to promote this idea that the ancient, mysterious, magical past was just there, lurking behind the ordinary boring surface of life. In their books, if you knew where to look, all this older magic of elves and wizards was still there, and if you were lucky you might get caught up in it. England and Wales were both strange and ancient countries still inhabited by characters like Herne the Hunter, hobgoblins, fairies, Gwyn ap Nudd and the knights of King Arthur. Especially the knights of King Arthur.
So when I moved to Wales, at the age of sixteen, the dark brooding presence of Cader Idris just behind my new secondary school had a ready-made resonance for me. It’s not the highest mountain in North Wales, but it’s higher than anything nearby, and it rears up, craggy and sharp in outline, dominating the surrounding countryside. Arthur’s seat, it means in Welsh, and the legend is that it’s where he’s buried with all his knights, waiting for the day we need him.
Cader Idris features prominently in Susan Cooper's The Grey King. Here the Grey King, the Llwyd Brenin, rules, and his wolves patrol on the slopes of the mountain, near the closed lake, Llyn Cau. It’s the power of Arthur that has to be awoken to defeat him.
There’s another local legend, that if you spend the night on the top of Cader Idris you come back either mad or a poet. I never really believed this – but in my early twenties I climbed the mountain with some friends from university. As we neared the summit, I began to get prickles down my back. I really didn’t want to get to the top, and I couldn’t explain why. It was something about wanting the mountain to remain unconquered, powerful, above and not beneath me, still part of the magic. Or maybe it was just not wanting to put it to the test – that I’d go mad. Anyway, I stopped, and said I’d wait for them. They made it back, unchanged: not mad, not poets. But I’m still glad I held back. The summit of Cader Idris is still, for me, a magical place where anything might happen.
C.J. Busby is the author of a children’s series set in the time of King Arthur; the first book of the series is Frogspell.
Frogspell.The first in a four-book series for younger readers set in the time of King Arthur. The adventures revisit Camelot, Merlin and Arthur but with a fresh touch, great characterisation and dialogue, and humour.
The stories are well plotted, funny and perfectly pitched for the younger reader. Would-be wizard Max, his sister (who wants to be a knight), two humorous pet animal characters - Ferocious, a world-weary rat and Adolphus, an over-enthusiastic young dragon, encounter magic, double-dealing, Morgan le Fay's schemes to win the throne from Arthur, magical quests and more.
Other titles coming in 2012: Cauldron Spells, Ice Spell and Sword Spell.
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Author Bio:
Cecilia was brought up on boats and in caravans in the southeast of England
and north Wales. She read avidly as a child, and moved frequently from place
to place. As an adult, she carried on reading and traveling: having studied
Social Anthropology at Cambridge, she lived and researched in south India for
a year for her PhD, and then taught Social Anthropology at universities in
Edinburgh, London and Kent.
Cecilia now lives in Devon and has three children, a boy and two girls, aged
between 8 and 16. She currently works on environmental issues with schools,
and is a copyeditor for an academic press. Cecilia's first picture book text, The
Thing, was shortlisted for the Nickelodeon Jr national Write a Bedtime Story
competition, and recorded for Fun Radio in March 2007.
Her Frogspell series for Templar - with illustrations by David Wyatt includes
Frogspell - published September 2011, Cauldron Spells in March 2012 and
Icespell in July 2012. The fourth title, Swordspell is slated for early 2013.
Frogspell was chosen as a Richard and Judy Children's Book Club read and
Cauldron Spells is on the 2012 Summer Reading Challenge list.
and north Wales. She read avidly as a child, and moved frequently from place
to place. As an adult, she carried on reading and traveling: having studied
Social Anthropology at Cambridge, she lived and researched in south India for
a year for her PhD, and then taught Social Anthropology at universities in
Edinburgh, London and Kent.
Cecilia now lives in Devon and has three children, a boy and two girls, aged
between 8 and 16. She currently works on environmental issues with schools,
and is a copyeditor for an academic press. Cecilia's first picture book text, The
Thing, was shortlisted for the Nickelodeon Jr national Write a Bedtime Story
competition, and recorded for Fun Radio in March 2007.
Her Frogspell series for Templar - with illustrations by David Wyatt includes
Frogspell - published September 2011, Cauldron Spells in March 2012 and
Icespell in July 2012. The fourth title, Swordspell is slated for early 2013.
Frogspell was chosen as a Richard and Judy Children's Book Club read and
Cauldron Spells is on the 2012 Summer Reading Challenge list.
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