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Swallows and Amazons Kindle Edition
The classic English series begins with a tale of two families of children uniting against a common foe: an uncle who claims he’s too busy for his nieces.
The Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) are on school holiday in the Lake District and are sailing a borrowed catboat named Swallow, when they meet the Blackett children (Nancy and Peggy), who sail the boat Amazon. The children camp together on Wild Cat Island where a plot is hatched against the Blacketts’ Uncle Jim who is too busy writing his memoirs to be disturbed.
Fireworks—literally—ensue along with a dangerous contest, a run-in with houseboat burglars, and the theft of Uncle Jim’s manuscript. How all this is resolved makes for an exciting and very satisfying story. Uncle Jim ends up apologizing for missing his nieces’ adventures all summer—thankfully, readers won’t miss a thing.
Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series has stood the test of time. More than just great stories, each one celebrates independence and initiative with a colorful, large cast of characters. Like the entire series that follows, this book is for children or grownups, anyone captivated by a world of adventure and imagination, exploring and setting sail.
The basis for the 2016 film starring Kelly MacDonald, Andrew Scott, and Rafe Spall.
“Clean and lively prose, with an earnest whimsy . . . The 12 books in the series are justly ranked as classics, standing with the children’s stories of Kipling, Barrie, and Grahame.” —The Telegraph (UK)
“For those who regret the hemming-in of childhood, the Swallows and Amazons are free-range children to gladden the heart.” —The Wall Street Journal
- Reading age9 - 11 years
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level4 - 6
- Lexile measure800L
- PublisherDavid R. Godine, Publisher
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2012
- ISBN-13978-0879235734
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Clean and lively prose, with an earnest whimsy…The 12 books in the series are justly ranked as classics, standing with the children’s stories of Kipling, Barrie and Grahame.”―The Telegraph
“The author really does know how to write for children: in other words, he writes of what he himself delights in and so pleases without any effort both young and old.”―The Nation
“This book is both silvery present and golden retrospect. All that is tedious and sullen and deceptive vanishes in its sunniness as clouds vanish in the tempered air of a summer day. . . We think that the book will last, too, from edition unto edition.”―Saturday Review
“There is plenty of excitement, a little danger, a quality of thinking, planning and fun which is delightful and stimulating.”―Times Literary Supplement
“He makes a tale of adventure a handbook to adventure.”―The Observer
“For those who regret the hemming-in of childhood, the Swallows and Amazons are free-range children to gladden the heart.”―The Wall Street Journal
From the Back Cover
Swallows and Amazons, the book that started it all in 1930, introduces the Walker family, the camp on Wild Cat Island, the able-bodied catboat "Swallow," and the two intrepid Amazons, plucky Nancy and Peggy Blackett.
About the Author
Arthur Ransome spent his childhood in England’s Lake District, and after a career in journalism that took him to Russia (where he married Trostsky’s secretary), China, and Egypt (interspersed with summers of cruising through the Baltic Sea and the canals of Europe), he retired to Coniston where he could practice his favorite pastimes of sailing and fishing and where he wrote the Swallows and Amazons series.
Product details
- ASIN : B085H669L2
- Publisher : David R. Godine, Publisher (September 1, 2012)
- Publication date : September 1, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 3094 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 195 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #125,005 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian.
After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.
Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.
Photography (c) Arthur Ransome's Literary Executors & courtesy of the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library
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During the course of their adventure, they meet up with the Blacketts, Captain Nancy (real name Ruth) and sister Mate Peggy, who have their own pirate sailboat, the Amazon, along with the girls' uncle James Taylor who lives on a houseboat near the island and becomes "Captain Flint" to the children. The Swallows and the Amazons declare war on each other with victory going to the side who can take the others' ship, then together they declare war on Captain Flint. Who will win? How will a burglary at Captain Flint's houseboat affect their relationship? And what will they do when a huge storm comes up over Wild Cat Island? The book had its beginning long before when as a child author Arthur Mitchell Ransome, with his brother and sisters, spent most of their holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston and played on the nearby lake, but it was further inspired by a summer in which Ransome taught the children of his friends, the Altounyans, to sail. In fact, three of the Altounyan children's names are adopted directly for the Walker family.
Swallows and Amazons, a paean to children's make-believe play and exploring their surrounding world, is a very pleasant story that involves the great outdoors, boats, fishing, and camping, with rich characterization, vivid descriptions, wholesome reading, and old-fashioned ideals. It includes a good deal of everyday Lakeland life in the early twentieth century, from the local farmers to charcoal burners working in the woods. Seldom have I ever come to the end of a book and felt sorry that it was over. If you read it and reach the same conclusion, you're in luck! Ransome wrote eleven more books in the "Swallows and Amazons Forever" series: Swallowdale (1931); Peter Duck (1932); Winter Holiday (1933); Coot Club (1934); Pigeon Post (1936); We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea (1937); Secret Water (1939); The Big Six (1940); Missee Lee (1941); The Picts And The Martyrs: or Not Welcome At All (1943); and Great Northern? (1947). A thirteenth book, Coots in the North, was left incomplete at the time of Ransome's 1967 death and published in an unfinished form in 1988 with some other short works. In subsequent adventures in the series, the children progressively grow older, change their usual roles, and become explorers or miners.
Some reviews complain about certain aspects of the book that might be outdated... however, I think the fact that it was written almost a century ago adds to its charm. Yes, the children talk about natives , but they were well-off, white British children in the early 1900's... so what do people expect? Besides, while it was written in the 1930's, the cast of characters includes some strong and fiercely independent women and girls. I loved reading a book with a very smart, skilled mother who was willing to allow her children to take risks and learn difficult things. And the two girls who sailed the boat known as the Amazon? They were a joy to read about when they finally made their way into the story.
I wish I knew about this book series when I was a girl. I probably would have begged my parents to let me learn how to sail and saved up my money to take lessons.
Although children today are generally not permitted to do this (probably be arrested for child endangerment), children can still read this book and dream about how it was or it could be.
Briefly the story is about two groups of children, a group of four siblings - the Swallows, and the other, two sisters - the Amazons, who are enamored with sailing and of being outdoors and live a rich fantasy revolving around these two desires.
The two groups are at first in conflict over who controls the island, but after a challenge settles the issue join forces to thwart skullduggery that casts unfair blame on the Swallows.
The book might be a bit slow in the beginning for younger readers, but once the two groups meet, it takes off and is exciting in a very innocent way. These are children being children, not children trying to young adults, making it very different from much contemporary fiction aimed at tweens/young teenagers.