Secret Water

Swallows and Amazons Book 8

The Swallows intend to sail in the Goblin to Hamford Water and camp with their father, but he is called away on naval business. Instead he maroons them with a small dinghy on an island. Before he leaves, Father gives them an outline map of the area they decide to call Secret Water and suggests they survey and chart the area before he returns to pick them up. For a surprise, he has arranged for the Amazons to come down from the Lake District and join them with another dinghy.

They see some mysterious footprints which turn out to belong to the Mastodon, a local boy. He mistakes them for the Eels, another family who camp in the area regularly. Later the Eels arrive and are initially hostile before they settle down for a friendly war.

It seems that due to the distractions of war and being cut off by the tides, the chart will not be completed. However early in the last morning two separate groups of children complete it.

Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives.

Author: Arthur Ransome

SKU : P7710

Paperback : 376 pages

About the Author :

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian.After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children’s treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.