On my list of recent/current reads are some of the Swallows and Amazons series, by Arthur Ransome. I have been reading these with my five year old and enjoy them so much, I’m getting them for myself now.
The books have a few core values or themes, like self-reliance, courage, resourcefulness, and looking out for each other. The central characters are the Walker children, John, Susan, Titty, and Roger. They will be joined later by Bridget who at this, the seventh book, is still too young to take part in their adventures. They are joined by Nancy and Peggy Blackett, the Amazon Pirates, who live in a house on the short of Coniston Water in the English Lake District which serves as a kind of hub for the series.
The children grow with each book in the series, but so far only Roger’s age has been mentioned: he is seven in the first book. I assume the others are spaced two years apart.
I like the stories for the simplicity of the lives everyone leads. In the 1930s schoolage children would travel unaccompanied by train, or camp in the moors or on an island with no adults. The adults in general are a useful device to provide food and carry messages, but they are rarely needed for the action. I like the children’s skill and determination at solving the problems they are beset with, from weathering false accusations to making a blast furnace, from a launching late night rescue to recover their comrades feared lost in a blizzard to being carried off to sea in a gale when their anchor drags.
The Walker children have the skills and discipline they learned from their father, a Commander in the Royal Navy, and the even temper and unflappability of their mother, born on an Australian sheep station and now mother to these fearless five while their father is on duty. In fact, his return to England is part of the story in the seventh book: so far, I haven’t seen him. The Blackett girls, raised by a sensible but overmatched mother and their indulgent uncle, are another matter. They lack the skills but make up for it in spirit and are often relied on to plan the adventures that John and Susan’s abilities will make real.
The Walkers are the most clearly defined. John is the captain of their ship, the Swallow, and commander of the expeditions. Susan is the mate and takes the mother role with the younger ones, enforcing bedtimes, arranging provisions, and building fireplaces. Titty hasn’t the same duties as her older siblings, so she finds other outlets. She is a bit of a mystic, fashioning a voodoo image in one book to help rid the Amazons of their overbearing great-aunt, and successfully dowsing for water in the midst of a drought in another book. Roger, as ship’s boy in the early books, is a boy through and through. He finds the gold mine in one book, he spends the night in a charcoal-burners’ wigwam after spraining his ankle in another: he has his own adventures that parallel the group’s.
If you’re interested, you can read up on the books and their author at the links Google will return.