weaselmom | Hollywood is due for a meteor strike.

Borders Books is awash in HP-mania in preparation for the upcoming book and movie. They had a display of "If you liked the HP books, you might like..." and there I saw an edition of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising that I'd never seen before. I picked it up and read those fateful words at the bottom: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. First reaction: "OH COOL!" Second reaction a moment later: "OH SHIT!" Because you know what "major motion picture" means, don't you?

But it's okay, they're not changing anything. I mean, except for making the Stantons Americans living in England. And making Will 13 years old. And making The Walker 25 years old. And taking out all the Arthurian myth references. And making Merriman short and swarthy. And making the Rider's horse white and making the Rider look like, as one person wrote, Arnold Rimmer in bondage gear. And adding Vikings and mall security and a love interest and something about snakes and just generally BORKING IT UP BEYOND RECOGNITION. They are taking out all the beauty and terror and magic of the land and its myths and turning it into a "major motion picture" with all that implies. The changes to the story are so drastic and shocking that, in comparison, Peter Jackson's LOTR movies are letter-perfect recreations of Tolkien's books. Take a second to let this sink in. I am not going to go see this movie unless somebody who thinks just like I do goes and says it's not that bad, that there will be something redeeming in it. But honestly I don't think that's going to be the case.

The Dark Is Rising is one of the books I love best in all the world. I have read it, I don't know, maybe 40 times. I now limit myself to reading it once a year, during Christmastime, because that's when the book is set. I don't re-read the other books as often or, in the case of Over Sea Under Stone, at all. The Grey King is actually pretty sad, and Silver On The Tree is too remote. Greenwitch is a bit better, but for some reason TDIR just resonates with me like nothing else.

The other books that are right up there with TDIR (almost on the same level, perhaps the tiniest fraction below) are Alan Garner's books The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. So far there is no word that Hollywood has gotten its filth-encrusted claws on this series yet, but you'll hear about it from me if they do.

Other beloved books from my childhood include Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright, which I just finished re-reading for the zillionth time; the Mad Scientists' Club books by Bertrand Brinley, which make me a bit sad that I didn't grow up as a boy in a small Midwest town; and the Moomin books of course (and the Japanese have already done something freaky with the Moomins, but I don't have to see it unless I walk through Kinokuniya Books in Uwajimaya). I used to love The Phantom Tollbooth but it hasn't "aged" for me quite as well as the others. Books that I discovered only just recently but wish I had known as a child are Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (had everybody read it but me?) and his two books about childhood, The Golden Age and Dream Days (thanks to John Rateliff for bringing these into my life along with so many other wonderful discoveries he has shared with me!).

Anyway, help me take my mind off this by telling me about your best-beloved books from when you were growing up.