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The Big Six. by Arthur Ransome. 1940. 367 pages. ISBN: 9781567921199

In the eight books of the Swallows and Amazons series published prior to The Big Six, Arthur Ransome’s wonderful characters have imagined themselves in a whole host of situations. Sometimes they are sailors; at other times, they’re miners, at still other times, they’re explorers. This time around, the Death and Glories (Joe, Bill, and Pete) and Tom Dudgeon as well as Dick and Dorothea, fancy themselves detectives, and they’re not too far off from becoming the real thing. Someone has been casting off boats, and almost everyone believes it is the Death and Glories. They have been in the vicinity of each boat set adrift, and Mr. Tedder, the local policeman is sure he will be able to prove it was them and disband the Coot Club. Dorothea, with her wild imagination, and Dick, with his new interest in photography team up to help their friends prove their innocence and catch the real culprit.

While I will always love the Swallows the most of all of Ransome’s characters, I really grew to love the Death and Glories in this book. In their first appearance, back in Coot Club, the three boys seemed very much like one entity, with very few obvious details to differentiate one from another. In this book, the three boys’ individual personalities are much more pronounced, and I enjoyed seeing the ways they related to one another. I also enjoyed seeing Dick and Dorothea in leadership roles in this story. In all the previous books they have been in, it seems like they have always taken their cues from someone else - namely Nancy, Tom, or Mrs. Barrable. To see them as heroes in this book was a nice change of pace. I also thought it was neat to introduce a mystery element into a sailing story, and I didn’t miss the technical sailing jargon that seems to permeate most of Ransome’s other writing.

I am now just three books away from completing this series, and The Big Six is definitely among my favorites of all the books. At some points, the repetition of the evidence and the lack of action is a bit tedious, but for the most part, the fresh dialogue keeps things moving, and the slow revelations about the different clues help to build suspense so that the reader doesn’t know the outcome of the mystery until the absolute last second. Though the reader can easily guess early on who the true criminal is, it is still entertaining to see the kids solve the mystery and prove their case even when none of the adults around them could manage. Just like all the other Swallows and Amazons books, this one celebrates what kids can do on their own and proves that they should be taken just as seriously as adults.

I own a copy of The Big Six. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat. 

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Secret Water. by Arthur Ransome. 1939. Jonathan Cape. 376 pages. ISBN: 9780224606387

After the real-life adventure of the Walkers in We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea, it was hard for me to imagine how Arthur Ransome could continue to write exciting stories about these characters. After all, was not their journey to Holland on their own in a borrowed boat a final exam of sorts, the challenge toward which all their make-believe had been building? Thankfully, Ransome has a bigger imagination than I do, and his eighth book in the Swallows and Amazons series is just as engaging as any of the others. Though the Walkers more or less mastered sailing in the last book, in Secret Water, they become true explorers. Their father drops them off on an island with a blank map, announces they are marooned, and leaves them there with one assignment: to explore uncharted territory and complete the map. Not long after, the Walkers are joined by the Blacketts, as well as a new group of “savages”, the Eels, who serve as guides among the islands and teach the Swallows and Amazons all about human sacrifice.

There are a number of things about Secret Water that demonstrate the development of the characters, especially since the first book. Bridget, who was once known as baby “Vicky” is now a member of the expedition. She’s about four years old, and she constantly reminds her siblings that she is old enough to participate in the same things they do. I think most authors tend to portray youngest siblings like Bridget as annoying tag-alongs who hold everything up and make messes, but Bridget is a formidable little girl, and she has her share of shining moments. Roger and Titty, previously the youngest members of the expedition, are now old enough to venture off on their own and take responsibility for themselves and for Bridget. The spirit of imagination and make-believe is most alive in them this time around, though Nancy also gets excited, especially when it comes time to have a corroboree with the Eels.

Susan is still the mother figure, and she plays that role much more completely when Bridget is around than in the past. John, who has in the past been just as much a part of the make-believe as anyone else, seems more fatherly in this book and also more concerned with impressing his own father. While Nancy worries about blood oaths and sacrifices, and Roger and Titty imagine themselves as Israelites and Egyptians, John focuses on the task at hand. We can see the beginnings of manhood in John, and I wonder whether we’ll see as much of him in the rest of the books of the series. Surely at some point Susan and John will outgrow the games of their childhood. I keep wondering whether their coming of age will figure into any of the stories.

Secret Water is a great follow-up to the adventure of We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea. The story rewards the Walkers’ safe journey home with another, more controlled opportunity to explore their independence and we get to see just how much they all love, admire, and want to please their dad. The new characters - Don, the Mastodon, and Daisy, Dum, and Dee, the Eels - are a lot of fun, and again completely different from Dot, Dick, or any of the Walkers or Blacketts. I was also amazed that Ransome described things like changes in the tide and sailing routes in language that made it possible for me to imagine them and follow along.

As curious as I am about the four remaining books in the series, I am disappointed that I’m two-thirds of the way through it already. I’ve come to really love these characters, and I’ll be sad when I finish the last book. That said, though, I’ve heard that book nine, The Big Six, is a detective story, and I’m really eager to see what that will be like, so I know it won't be long before I jump right into the next one. 

The copy of Secret Water I read for this review is part of my personal household collection.

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat. 

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Coot Club. by Arthur Ransome. 1934. David R. Godine Publisher. 352 pages. ISBN: 9780879237875

Coot Club is a story in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, but it’s the first one so far not to include a single Swallow or Amazon. This time, the only familiar characters are Dick and Dorothea Callum, first introduced as new friends of the Walkers and Blacketts in Winter Holiday. They are spending their Easter holidays with their mother’s former teacher, Mrs. Barrable, who lives in a boat called the Teasel on a river in Norfolk. Mrs. Barrable has a neighbor named Tom, who is a member of the coot club, devoted to the protection of coots and other birds nesting along the river. Tom’s friends and allies include twin girls, experienced sailors nicknamed Port and Starboard, and the Death and Glories, three rough-and-tumble little boys with a boat of their own. Though Mrs. Barrable expects to spend her holidays painting on a stationary Teasel, she soon finds herself on a sailing adventure, as Tom escapes some tourists he has upset, and Dick and Dorothea finally have a chance to prove themselves as real sailors.

Of all the Ransome books I’ve reviewed so far, this one is the hardest to summarize. So much happens, and there are just so many characters. That’s the remarkable thing about Ransome’s writing that I don’t think I have mentioned yet in my reviews - the sheer number of characters and Ransome’s ability to manage them all. The cast grows with each new story, but every personality is fresh and new, and I never have trouble keeping track of who is who. Not only that, but the characters are described so well, each of them seems almost like a real person, and I still think about the characters long after finishing each book. In this book, the reader really comes to sympathize with Tom, who goes to great lengths to escape the hullabaloos, the rude visitors whom Tom has so angered, and to love Mrs. Barrable, who, like Captain Flint, is more like a child than an adult.

The story itself is exciting because it involves a true sailing trip, more similar to the imagined voyage of Peter Duck than to the short day excursions the Swallows and Amazons make in the other books. Kids become armchair travelers as they read, learning about the wildlife, bridges, and geography of the Norfolk Broads, while also adding some new sailing terminology to their vocabularies and worrying about the hullabaloos. It was also interesting to see the differences in Tom and his friends’ approach to sailing as compared with the approach of the Walkers or Blacketts. The Swallows and Amazons do a lot more pretending than do the Coots, but both groups are wary of adult involvement, and both have enemies real and imagined.

As always, the writing in this book is impeccable, and though I missed my beloved Walkers and Blacketts, it didn’t take long for me to delve into this new segment of Ransome’s world which he so carefully and wonderfully describes. I don’t know who is in the rest of the books in the second half of the series, but after finishing Coot Club, I know I wouldn’t mind running into any of its characters again.

I borrowed Coot Club from my local public library. 

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Winter Holiday. by Arthur Ransome. 1933. David R. Godine Publisher. 350 pages. ISBN: 9780879236618

Winter Holiday is the fourth book in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, and the first one not set during summer vacation. In this adventure, the Walker kids (John, Susan, Titty, and Roger) and the Blackett girls (Nancy and Peggy) are joined by a third set of siblings - Dick and Dorothea Callum, known as the D’s. This time, instead of sailing to Wild Cat Island or setting up camp in Swallowdale, these allied groups are preparing themselves for a trip to the North Pole. There is just one problem - Nancy, the usual leader of the group’s expeditions, has the mumps, and they must do without her spirited guidance.

The most impressive thing about this series is the way Ransome is consistently able to reinvent the Lake District setting to make it seem new for each adventure. What I particularly enjoy is the fact that each reinvention comes as a result of everyday events in the kids’ lives. In Swallows and Amazons, the two groups meet in the first place because they both discover the same island. In Swallowdale, they wreck the Swallow, which forces them to scout out a place to camp that can be reached on foot. Now, in Winter Holiday, it’s the winter weather that requires them to re-imagine their tropical paradise as the site of an arctic expedition. Ransome totally immerses the reader in each new world he creates, and this arctic setting is no exception. I was happy to start thinking of Wild Cat Island as Spitzbergen, and Captain Flint’s houseboat as The Fram, and I loved the way the kids adjusted their make-believe to suit the ice on the lake and the many skaters out on the water enjoying it.

Another wonderful aspect of this book is the shift in point of view from the previous stories. In the early books of the series, the reader sees almost everything from the perspective of the Walkers, as they learn from Nancy and Peggy how to become real sailors. By introducing Dick and Dorothea, city kids with no real camping or sailing experience, the reader gets to see the familiar world of the Swallows and Amazons through fresh new eyes. Dick’s scientific interests, especially in astronomy, and Dorothea’s tendency to romanticize everything and turn it into literature, also add further depth to the books, and provide more opportunities for more types of kids to connect with them. It’s also just exciting to see regular kids getting to do all the exciting things the Swallows and Amazons do. I think kids always get a kick out of living vicariously through fictitious people who are similar to them.

Finally, I think this book does a great job of really humanizing Susan. All along, she has been the best behaved child of them all, serving as surrogate mother and keeper of the peace. In Winter Holiday, though, we finally see her resolve waver a little bit, as even she is overcome by the fun of the arctic exploration. There is much more sneaking out at night and disregarding adult rules and warnings in this book than in the others, and it’s gratifying to see that Susan isn’t just a goody two shoes. It’s also nice to see minor rule-breaking that doesn’t result in disaster, and for which the kids always make amends.

After 1 Comments on Old School Sunday: Review: Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome, last added: 6/11/2012