Swallows and Amazons

Name: Swallows and Amazons
Author: Arthur Ransome
ISBN: 9787201146416

by Arthur Ransome

Ages 9–12 Reading age 10 Novel Set in outdoors and wild places adventurouswarm

Four children are allowed to sail a dinghy to an island and camp there alone, where they find two rival girls have claimed it first.

A story about children, adventurous and warm in tone. We would put it with children of 9–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.

Nothing flagged

We have not flagged any content in this one that a parent would usually want warning about.

Part of a series

This is book 1 of the Swallows and Amazons series, so there is more to read if it goes down well — which is worth a great deal with a reluctant reader.

Our take on this book

Four children are given leave to sail a little dinghy called Swallow out to an island on a lake and camp there by themselves, where they find two fierce girls in another boat, the Amazons, have already claimed it — and so a summer of alliances, expeditions and imagined warfare begins. Arthur Ransome's 1930 book is the great story of children being trusted, and its magic is that the adults stay almost entirely out of it: the sailing is real, the camping is real, and the war with the Amazons is a game the children commit to completely. Nothing supernatural happens and nobody is in serious danger; the drama is weather, seamanship and the rules the children make for themselves. For a nine- to twelve-year-old it is a slow, deep, immersive pleasure — a book that makes a reader want to light a fire, pitch a tent and be left alone to run their own world for a while.