Children of the Stones

This is a novelisation of the 1977 TV series of the same name, one of my faves. I generally find novelisations of TV shows a little lacking because the visual doesn't translate well to text. In this case it's difficult to convey the uncanniness of the show without experiencing its tense atmosphere, conveyed through long, quiet shots of the village that houses the eponymous stones, but other than that the writing was pretty good, and gave some extra insights into the motivations of the characters.

Children of the Stones was a 1977 landmark kids series. It was never repeated. The story is John Wyndham like. Astrophysicist Adam Brake arrives with his son, Matthew at the tiny village of Millbury. He's there for to research the strange stone circle that encompasses the entire village. Stranger still are the weirdly cheerful villagers with their fixed smiles and greeting of ‘Happy Day'. Shades of the Wicker Man abound when they start to understand that the circle itself holds people captive. And the mysterious Hendrick, a prominent figure in the village, is behind it all.

Children of the Stones is intelligent, atmospheric and genuinely unnerving tale. Not only that but it incorporates complex concepts. Things like ‘Time Circles', ‘Psychic Bubbles' and ‘Time Rifts'- tricky subjects for adults let alone a story supposedly aimed at children.