Hey Blog! This week it’s another book review, and this time I’m going to the Lake District through the ever-expanding bookverse of my library!
One of my favourite series of books is the Swallows and Amazons series, by Arthur Ransom. Top notch books, these are some of the most exiting adventure novels ever written. All the more so because they could be done by any group of children and teens interested in desert islands, sailing, birds, gold mining, and exploration. I have been mildly obsessed by these books, to the extent that I once turned half a blue oil barrel into a tiny boat and sailed around the garden, before actually going to the local lake for real sailing. And then going back the next year for more, and the year after that, and then out at sea on Johanna Lucretia earlier this year. If you read the first few pages of Swallows and Amazons and want no more, call a doctor – as someone reviewing them once said!
The whole storyline starts off with John, Susan, Titty and Roger awaiting the go-ahead for using the dinghy in the boathouse to get to the island viewable halfway down the lake (which resembles both Coniston and Windermere). These four are the Swallows – Captain, Mate, Able-seaman and Ship’s Boy – named after the dinghy Swallow. Arriving on the island, they find they are not alone: ‘natives’ have been there, evident in the white cross on the stump in the harbour and the neat pile of firewood in the best spot for a camp. Then there is the man on the houseboat, who carries a cannon on its foredeck – and “ships with no secrets do not generally carry even one”. All seems to be going well, and then the strange dinghy Amazon with two girls sailing it and a pirate flag at the masthead sails round the island, a chase begins, and an arrow with a green feather is fired into camp – and so begins a treaty of offence and defence between the Swallows and Amazons, an alliance against the houseboat man Uncle Jim/Captain Flint, and a war!
Aside from getting me into sailing, it inspired me with exploration of islands, waterways, camping, boats and having a gang of friends to go off on adventures with. Unfortunately, I have never been able to explore the local lake and land on the islands; but I have been camping. Not on an island in a lake though. The worst thing, however, is I don’t have a bunch of nautically minded friends who wish to make our own voyage of discovery. Still looking though!
If you read the first book and like it, there are others waiting. Next up is Swallowdale, which involves a shipwreck (one of the finest pieces of writing – even knowing what is going to happen whenever I read it, it still feels like it could have not happened!); Peter Duck, which includes an old sailor from clipper days and a race across the Atlantic for treasure; and Winter Holiday, which includes two new characters, the Ds, and a journey across the ice-bound lake for the North Pole. And there are more! I am currently part way through Pigeon Post, and the Swallows, Amazons and Ds are gold mining. I am proud to have these books on my bookshelf – and will certainly be reading them long into the future, perhaps when I have a boat of my own!