Vintage Children's Classics publish the best books in a beautiful, affordable and accessible styleGrowth of children's market: Office for National Statistics indicates an 11% growth in primary-aged children to 2026.Includes the original b/w illustrations and maps by Arthur RansomeExtra materialRansome was the 1930s equivalent of JK Rowling - the Swallows and Amazons series had sold more than a million copies by the time the last was published, and have sold many millions more sinceThe Arthur Ransome Society (TARS) boasts more than 2,000 members, with groups in North America, Australia and Japan exchanging news and views on the exploits of Captain John and his crew through such august publications as
The Outlaw and
Ship's Log.Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884. He had an adventurous life - as a baby in he was carried by his father to the top of the Old Man of Coniston, a peak that is 2,276ft high! He went to Russia in 1913 to study folklore and in 1914, at the start of World War I he became a foreign correspondent for the Daily News. In 1917 when the Russian Revolution began he became a journalist and was a special correspondent of the
Guardian. He played chess with Lenin and married Trotsky's personal secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. On their return to England, he bought a cottage near Windermere in the Lake District and began writing children's stories. In a 1958 author's note, Ransome wrote: ''I have been often asked how I came to write
Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above . . . Going away from it we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind's eye, could see the beloved sky-line of great hills beneath it. Swallows grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.'' He published the first of his children's classics, the twelve
Swallows And Amazons books, in 1930. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book,
Pigeon Post. He died in 1967.
‘Let fly jib sheet! Slack away main! Fenders out!’
Dick and Dorothea – also known as The Ds – arrive in Norfolk all ready to learn how to sail. They couldn’t hope for a better teacher than Tom Dudgeon. But Tom is in a spot of trouble. After seeing the beastly Margoletta moored clean across the nests of his beloved coots, Tom set the motorcruiser adrift. Now the enemy have offered a bounty on his head. Can they save the birds’ nest from almost certain destruction? Will they avoid being caught by the awful Hullabaloos? Only some brave friends and quick thinking stands between them and disaster…
Includes exclusive material: In ‘The Backstory’ you can test your knowledge of the book, learn about the adventurous author and get some handy facts about birds and boats.
Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
In my early teens I read Arthur Ransome's books,
Coot Club and
The Big Six. They're set in Norfolk and the kids in the books go sailing on the Broads. They impressed me so much that I persuaded my father to take me on holiday to the Norfolk Broads where we had great fun teaching ourselves to sail, all on the impetus of Ransome's books.I read the entire series of Arthur Ransome's children's books as a child and thought they were absolutely fantastic. They were full of adventure, all sorts of exciting things happened and they were truly inspirational
Coot Club, that great classic of the Norfolk Broads
