Swallows & Amazons |
The
first of the canon |
|
Swallowdale |
Further
adventures of the Swallows & Amazons
Including a shipwreck.
{Use link at left to order from Amazon UK} |
|
Winter Holiday |
Important
new characters are introduced.
Also, an expedition to the North Pole |
|
Pigeon Post |
Gold-mining,
carrier pigeons, claim-jumpers,
water-dowsing & a really Impressive fire.
{Not currently available in US}. |
|
The Picts & the Martyrs
:or:
Not Welcome At All |
What to
do when you're properly invited
but the watch-gorgon doesn't know you are.
Figuratively speaking, anyway.
If Nancy Blackett is your host.
[Available from Amazon UK] |
|
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea |
A first-class
adventure with some truly
hair-raising dangers and true heroism;
four children forced to
sail a yacht they barely know across
the North Sea in a full gale.
[Available from Amazon UK] |
|
Secret Water |
Mapping
a hidden inland sea, meetings
with "cannibal 'natives'", and a thrilling hairsbreadth
escape from sharing the fate of Pharoah's Army.
[Available from Amazon UK] |
|
Great Northern? |
Protecting
Very Rare Birds from a "naturalist", while
also trying to prove they're really there.
Throw in problems with a more-or-less
feudal Scots Laird...
"'Dogmudgeon' is a lovely word..."
[Available from Amazon UK] |
|
Coot Club |
This is
the first of a two-book set that i consider a
"side series" -- two of the cast have separate adventures in the Norfolk
Broads.
Bird Protection and Chase & Adventure. |
|
The Big Six |
Sequel
to "Coot Club":
More unjust accusations and Chase & Adventure.
And a Really Big Fish.
I mean
Really
Big.
{Available thru Amazon UK as a special order}. |
|
Peter Duck |
Swallows
& Amazons Apocrypha:
Supposedly a yarn the children from the series spin,
featuring themselves in seagoing adventure, with Pirates and
Treasure. |
|
Missee Lee |
Swallows
& Amazons Apocrypha:
[apparently]
More pirates -- Chinese, this time, led by a Cambridge-educated Chinese Pirate
Queen.
((Nancy & Peggy's Uncle Jim went to Oxford))
A horrendous fire at sea.
{Available from Amazon UK} |
|
A
Couple of Notes:
About The "Swallows & Amazons" Books
Themselves
The "Swallows & Amazons" books were written ((from about 1928 to 1948)),
by an Oxford-educated journalist and world-traveller, who did not believe
in "writing down to his audience", as so many modern children's authors seem
to, to be read by British children of what we here in the US would
consider about Third through Eighth Grade levels ((based on the apparent
ages of the protagonists)). While perfect in content and narration
for that audience, they are written at a vocabulary level which is, shall
we say, a bit higher than what is often considered normal reading levels
for most if not all of that age-span in the US today, and Very British in
much of the terminology ((particularly the "LSD" pre-decimal money)).
On the other hand, anyone who has managed to read, say, the "Narnia" books,
or Diana Wynne Jones's wonderful books for a similar audience, will have
no trouble at all with these -- the concepts and vocabulary
levels are about equivalent.
I began reading them when i was about eight, and had no real problems with
vocabulary or context ((except for not having the faintest idea of the meaning
of the phrase "round as a football"...)), so...
About Those
Cultural Assumptions
At least two of these books -- "Peter Duck" and
"Missee Lee" -- exhibit the cultural attitudes of their
day pretty well.
In "PD", black pearls are referred to as "niggers", though i don't believe
the term is anywhere else used in the series.
In "ML" the Chinese pirates are pretty much typical early "Terry &
the Pirates"-type warlords, coolies and so on -- but Missee Lee
herself, forced to cut short her Cambridge education and return to China
to take her father's place as "Twenty-one gun Taicoon", and trying to
make part of China a little bit of Cambridge, is a priceless
character.
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