1. What must Will Stanton do to stave off the rising of the dark, in Susan Cooper’s timeless children’s fantasy novel, the midwinter-set The Dark is Rising?

   1. He must find the “one ring”

   2. Racing against time, he must light the ancient beacon fires of England

   3. He must collect a set of six elemental “signs”

   4. He must rage, rage against the dying of the light

2. Where does poet Kathleen Jamie experience the winter solstice in her acclaimed collection of travel writing, Findings?

   1. Grindafjord in Norway

   2. Tórshavn in the Faroe islands

   3. Grimsby

   4. The Orkney islands

3. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven is set “upon a midnight dreary” in “bleak December”. What happens at the end?

   1. The raven remains “just above [the narrator’s] chamber door”

   2. The “lost Lenore” is returned to the narrator

   3. The raven drags the narrator “back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore”

   4. The narrator wrings the raven’s neck

4. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep..." What is the next line of Robert Frost's poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening?

   1. They call to me, they make me weep

   2. But I have promises to keep

   3. And filled with snow, its downy sweep

   4. But full of dirty, smelly sheep

5. What is the name of the facility in the far north where children are separated from their daemons in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights?

   1. Bolvangar

   2. Svalbard

   3. Mordor

   4. Aberdeen

6. “It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, <br>Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.<br> It lies behind stars and under hills, <br>And empty holes it fills.<br> It comes out first and follows after,<br> Ends life, kills laughter.” <br>The answer to this riddle is (you guessed it) darkness, but in which book is this riddle asked (in the dark, of course)?

   1. The Dark Tower by Stephen King

   2. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

   3. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

   4. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J K Rowling

7. Who wakes to feel “the fell of dark, not day”?

   1. Sylvia Plath

   2. Jilly Cooper

   3. Gerard Manley Hopkins

   4. James Frey

8. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s immortal opening, “it was a dark and stormy night”, is also the beginning of which Newbery medal-winning children’s book?

   1. Susan Cooper’s The Grey King

   2. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time

   3. Mildred D Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

   4. Louis Sachar’s Holes

9. Before it was a carol, put to music by Harold Darke (yes, really), In the Bleak Midwinter was a poem. Who wrote it?

   1. Christina Rossetti

   2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

   3. Roald Dahl

   4. John Keats

10. What is the name of the character suffering from insomnia over one long night in Paul Auster’s novel, Man in the Dark?

    1. Estragon

    2. A

    3. August Brill

    4. Paul Auster

11. The character Hazel D’Ark appears in Simon R Green’s fantasy novel Deathstalker. What is the plot of the book?

    1. D’Ark, an orphan, discovers she holds within her the magic which will save humanity

    2. D’Ark must confront her own internal darkness if she is to find her lost love

    3. A giant spider is eating the world

    4. A group of rebels fights against evil galactic empress the Iron Bitch

Solutions

1:C, 2:D, 3:A, 4:B, 5:A, 6:B, 7:C, 8:B, 9:A, 10:C, 11:D

Scores

1. 5 and above.

   “Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude” William Shakespeare

2. 9 and above.

   “In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer” Albert Camus

3. 11 and above.

   “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” William Blake