This is one of the finest books for children, both boys and girls. In 1928, four children, aged 7 to 12 (?), whose father is in the navy, vacation with their mother and baby sister on a lake in the north of England. They borrow a 13' sailboat (the Swallow) from the farmer with whom they are staying, and camp on an island in the lake. They meet two girls (the Amazons), about the same age, and have realistic adventures together. The first in a series of twelve books, maybe the best kids' books ever written.
A little imagination to travel to a steam and sail era lake country summer vacation, and further with a group of kids earnestly imagining themselves as explorers and pirates. Inspiring now as when I was the kid's ages, instructively detailing technicalities of sailing, camping, exploring, as well as life lessons about earning responsibility, negotiating with friend and foe, and dealing with fear and misjudgement.
It is interesting reading this at the same time I'm reading lots of Enid Blyton. In a way, they are the same books, a group of kids off on their own for a few days having an adventure. While Blyton is always moving, having an ADVENTURE, facing nefarious smugglers/kidnappers, Ransome feels more like a genuine children's adventure.
Very little happens (he will spend a paragraph with a lovely description of a dipper bird hopping in and out of the water) and the adventures have to come out of the children's imagination (instead of having Scooby Doo villains chasing them). It feels like the difference between creating adventures and having lots of things just happening to you.
The parents in Blyton seem downright neglectful, where Ransome's parents give them freedom but are still quite involved. Their mother is somewhere between being a mother and indulging their children's imaginary worlds.
All in …
It is interesting reading this at the same time I'm reading lots of Enid Blyton. In a way, they are the same books, a group of kids off on their own for a few days having an adventure. While Blyton is always moving, having an ADVENTURE, facing nefarious smugglers/kidnappers, Ransome feels more like a genuine children's adventure.
Very little happens (he will spend a paragraph with a lovely description of a dipper bird hopping in and out of the water) and the adventures have to come out of the children's imagination (instead of having Scooby Doo villains chasing them). It feels like the difference between creating adventures and having lots of things just happening to you.
The parents in Blyton seem downright neglectful, where Ransome's parents give them freedom but are still quite involved. Their mother is somewhere between being a mother and indulging their children's imaginary worlds.
All in all, I'd rather be a child in Ransome's world than Blyton's.
It's almost exactly 50 years since I last read this book, and I've given it another star. I think I've read it three times, and found it better each time. I tried reading it as a child, and I think I also read [b:Coot Club|979767|Coot Club (Swallows and Amazons, #5)|Arthur Ransome|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388197602s/979767.jpg|1983338] and [b:Missee Lee|329736|Missee Lee (Swallows and Amazons, #10)|Arthur Ransome|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389300207s/329736.jpg|374488] as a child, but did not find them particularly good. And after 50 years I had forgotten most of the plot pf this one.
So reading it the third time round it was almost like seeing it with fresh eyes, not least because about halfway between my last reading and this one, in 1993, I had read [b:The Life of Arthur Ransome|2356421|The life of Arthur Ransome|Hugh Brogan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|2363187], and found that his life was more interesting than the books he wrote.
For those who don't know it, [booK:Swallows and Amazons] is …
It's almost exactly 50 years since I last read this book, and I've given it another star. I think I've read it three times, and found it better each time. I tried reading it as a child, and I think I also read [b:Coot Club|979767|Coot Club (Swallows and Amazons, #5)|Arthur Ransome|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388197602s/979767.jpg|1983338] and [b:Missee Lee|329736|Missee Lee (Swallows and Amazons, #10)|Arthur Ransome|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389300207s/329736.jpg|374488] as a child, but did not find them particularly good. And after 50 years I had forgotten most of the plot pf this one.
So reading it the third time round it was almost like seeing it with fresh eyes, not least because about halfway between my last reading and this one, in 1993, I had read [b:The Life of Arthur Ransome|2356421|The life of Arthur Ransome|Hugh Brogan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|2363187], and found that his life was more interesting than the books he wrote.
For those who don't know it, [booK:Swallows and Amazons] is about four children of the Walker family, aged from 7 up, John, Susan, Titty and Roger, who go camping on an island in a lake in Cumbria, and sail there in a boat. I suppose that a book that featured a girl called Titty was one of the things that put me off as a child. And also that a camping holiday that involves going to an island in a boat would be far more interesting to do than to read about. Reading it this time, I realised that Titty was by far the most interesting character in the story.
And thinking about it, it seems to me that children's books of that era (between the world wars) seem to have been the kind of books that adults think children should like, but adults actually enjoy them more. These children had imaginary adventures in the middle of their rather prosaic and humdrum life. Most children do, I suppose, but would prefer to read about the real adventures of fictional children than imaginary ones, because they already have imaginary adventures of their own.
I had the same problem with the "William" books by [a:Richmal Crompton|95840|Richmal Crompton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225039204p2/95840.jpg], which belonged to the same period. I read several of them as a child, but always found them rather unsatisfactory. Some of them were written in war time, and William and his friends would imagine themselves capturing German spies or themselves spying on Quislings, but there usually turned out to be a more prosaic explanation. As I child, however, I did learn the significance of words like "Quisling".
I once picked up one of the "William" books as an adult, and read a couple of the stories in it, and was initially surprised at the language. [a:Richman Crompton|95840|Richmal Crompton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225039204p2/95840.jpg] did not write in simplified [a:Enid Blyton|10657|Enid Blyton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1298204474p2/10657.jpg] language for kids. She wrote adult prose. But I was also struck by the adult view of children. There was a thread of adult amusement at the antics of children running through all the stories. They were laughing at children, not with them.
Arthur Ransome does better than that, but his books still strike me as an adult's idea of what children like than what children actually like. There are books about children written mainly for adult readers that take that a bit further; [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327869409s/7624.jpg|2766512], for example, which is also about children camping on an island, but viewed somewhat differently.
