Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome. 352 pp. David R Godine. $14.95. (First in a ten-book series.)
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You don’t find parents like the Walkers anymore. Overly protective they are not. Instead, while Mr. Walker is at sea with the Navy, he and Mrs. Walker encourage their four children, ranging in age from seven to about 14, to live out their fantasies during their summer holiday in England’s Lake District. The children sail their small boat to an uninhabited island and camp there for weeks, pretending to be pirates and explorers. They spend their days and nights sailing, cooking their own food, bathing in the lake, and teaching their younger brother how to swim. Mother checks in on the children regularly while also keeping tabs on them through the eyes and ears of friendly locals, including farmers who give them milk each morning and another family whose two daughters, known as the Amazons, soon join the adventure.
Based on Ransome’s own childhood, "Swallows and Amazons" is the first in a remarkable ten-book series set in the 1920s about four siblings — John, Susan, Titty and Roger — and the friends and family members who join them in their adventures. Girls take center stage as much as boys do. In fact, the elder Amazon, Nancy, is more adventurous and a better sailor than the eldest Swallow, John. In this first title and as the series continues, sailing remains at the heart of the books though it never overwhelms.
Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake...The wind was against him, and he was tacking up against it to the farm, where at the gate his patient mother was awaiting him. He could not run straight against the wind because he was a sailing vessel, a tea-clipper, the Cutty Sark.
In this era of the "Dangerous Book for Boys" and the "Daring Book for Girls" teaching our children how to play in the natural world, the practical-minded Walker kids who make their own adventures then cook dinner and get their younger siblings to bed on time make me yearn to create the same sort of vacations for my children. But if I can’t do that, we’ll at least read all these books together.
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Other formats:
- BBC TV productions of two of the ten "Swallows and Amazons" books — "The Big Six" and "Coot Club" — are available on DVD.
- Unabridged audio cassettes of the series are hard to find but well-reviewed.
