Customer Reviews

Secret Water

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Naval Commander Walker, with the complete cooperation of his wife, their mother, maroons his five children on a tidal island on the coast of England. Of course, the children, ranging from the eldest, John, to the youngest, Bridget, are even more enthusiastic than their parents. It's summer vacation time again and the family is looking forward to a time camping and exploring the island. Then Commander Walker's bosses, the Lords of the Admiralty, decree his presence is required in London. All is gloom until Walker persuades his wife that these kids have demonstrated their responsibility and can be left alone for a time.

This is the eighth in an excellent sailing/adventure/camping series from this author. Like the others, Secret Water, is a careful chronicle of the Walker children's adventures. Along the way readers are treated to practical advice about camping, sailing, and dealing with tides and mud. This book also introduces new characters and reunites the Swallows and The Amazons. All of it is impeccably written with style, verve, great pace, a mystery or two and the sensitivity of the author to the attitudes and perceptions of children of various ages. This is a book that can be read by children of every age.

A bonus is the large number of pen and ink illustrations, done by the author.

After the excitement of "We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea", Arthur Ransome's eighth story in the Swallows and Amazons series returns to more comfortable and comforting territory. Set very shortly after the children's ordeal at sea in the previous volume, "Secret Water" finds the Walker children "marooned" on an island in the tidal area of Hamford Water, Essex. Here they spend a week or so, camping and surveying the low-lying islands, tortuous channels and tidal flats, whilst also having to deal with the quandary of whether to make friends with (or wage war upon) the local savage tribesmen. Once, of course, the small matter of one of their number being taken for a human sacrifice has been resolved!

This story is something of an attempt to return to the simple style of tale that worked so well with both "Swallows and Amazons" and "Swallowdale": a tale of children building a world of their own creation and at the same time learning to deal successfully with the real world in which they find themselves. After some of the more exciting later volumes in the S&A series, though, some readers may find the results just a little flat.

As always, though, Ransome weaves his tale through the deftest handling of prose and most adults at least should find this tale as charming as any the others in the series. It is nice, too, to see that the young Bridget is now able to start participating in the activities of her siblings.

Secret Water is a great book!!! I'm a 10 year old boy and I love it. My favorite part is when they gather with their savage friends and have a big feast. Anybody would like it just as much as I did.

Arthur Ransome¹s books are the perfect evocation of a British childhood between the wars.Set, to begin with, in the Lake District of England they follow the adventures of the Amazon pirates, Nancy and Peggy and the Walker children; John, Susan, Titty (presumably Letitia, we are never told) and Roger as they fight wars, endure hardships, discover treasure and force the hapless Captain Flint to walk the plank. Though quite old now, these books will never be dated because they talk to children in their own language, the language of desperate acts and dashed hopes, unexpected reversals and stunning victories. These pages are crammed with the joy of summer holidays, far from the drudgery of school and the unwanted solicitousness of anxious parents.Later in the series the action moves from the Lake District to the Fens, to Scotland, to the Caribbean and even to pre-Communist China. Throughout the series Arthur Ransome manages to introduce wildly diverse characters without ever losing the original threads that make these books so entertaining. If you buy nothing else for your eight year old reader this year, start him or her on this series with Swallows and Amazons

After writing some of the most thrilling children's stories ever (including those featuring a certain H. Potter), Ransome slowed the pace with Secret Water. Actually, the plot is just a bit feeble and while it has its moments of excitement, this may be the weakest of the Swallows and Amazons series. I read it directly after We Didn't Mean to go to Sea and Great Northern and it lacks their power and drama. Yet in Secret Water the reader is among friends and that, plus the usual Ransome writing skills, make it well worth reading.

Set immediately following the events of "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea," this volume in the Swallows & Amazons series finds the Walkers once again sunk in gloom as their father, Cdr. Walker, has been denied his hoped-for leave, which will apparently prevent them from going on their planned family cruise to a region of marshes and islands suggested by their friend Jim Brading. Then Daddy gets his Great Idea: he and Mother will "maroon" the children (including Ship's Baby Bridget and Ship's Kitten Sinbad) with camping gear and provisions while they go up to London, and the "shipwrecked sailors" will explore and chart the unknown regions in which they've found themselves. The large island that will serve as their headquarters is surrounded by mud flats at low tide and has a farm (promptly christened a "native kraal" by Titty) near the middle of it, and with a small sailing boat of their own, the "Wizard," the self-sufficient and experienced Walkers anticipate no real trouble.

They've scarcely set up camp when they meet a local boy whom they dub "the Mastodon" (for the queer round tracks he leaves while walking with his "splatchers," a kind of snowshoe for use in mud) and learn that he's anticipating the arrival of his "tribe," the Eels, who camp on a nearby island every year for a spell of pretend savagery. (Why they're so late in coming--it's almost the end of the summer holidays--is never properly explained.) Then, to their astonishment and delight, the Amazons, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, join them with another small boat, "Firefly," and Nancy, as always, starts livening things up by suggesting that the explorers become blood members of the tribe. The Mastodon is willing: he thinks Bridget would make a much better human sacrifice (the centerpiece of the annual corroborree) than the usual one, skinny Daisy. Then the Eels hear of the explorers' presence and send word to him to get rid of them any way he can, and at first it looks as if the whole expedition will be ruined. But this time it's Bridget, though only four, who saves the day when she gets "captured" by the Eels and explains the situation to them. Immediate friendship results, and the mapmaking and corroborree are both resounding successes.

As always, Ransome draws his characters and setting with skill and avoids "talking down" to his readers. Titty and Roger, the Able-Seamen, though still young enough to get in trouble, are clearly growing and maturing through their past experiences, as is shown in one episode where they're stranded on the mudflats with the tide coming in. Suspense and tension abound almost to the very last page, as the Amazons in "Firefly" and the AB's in "Wizard," having resolved to complete the blank map left by Cdr. Walker, race the returning "Goblin" to the explorers' camp. The harum-scarum Blacketts, who always improve any book they appear in, add their special brand of imagination, and while it still isn't quite as good as the adventures set in the Lake Country, this volume in the series is a definite keeper.

Secret water finds the swallows marooned on a desert island for real. Surrounded by waters that rise, and threaten to drown those caught by the flood, then reciede, revealing mud flats that bars crossings except to specially marked paths, or do they? New adventures abound in this delightful book that introduces new characters into the series and reunites the swallows and amazons. A must read for fans of all ages

..not at all bad. SECRET WATER finds our heroes & heroines very much in the process of Growing Up, with the inevitable tensions that late adolescence brings. Here we find the Swallows grimly determined to carry out a mapping task that their father has set them, and confronting the Amazons, who would rather ally themselves with local children who have their own "game" of tribal warfare among the marshes of the East Coast. There is a lot of good stuff here & some high adventure, and the book reads very "true" to the series. My daughter Clare regards it as one of the best, and I doubt that anyone will be disappointed with either the plot or the outcome.

This is my least favorite Swallows & Amazons book. The Swallows, Amazons, and new friends the Eels are mapping the islands and channels in a tidal slough. This means waiting for the right tide, sailing somewhere, getting stuck a lot in the mud, taking bearings, and racing back to camp before the tide goes out. Repeat for five or six days. I wish they'd gone with Nancy's idea of a war instead!

The surveying and the illustrations of the map in progress are interesting, but you need the completed map (in the front cover) to follow Ransome's vague descriptions, and that map reveals many plot points, spoiling any sense of tension.

This Arthur Ransome is as good as the rest, well written and with a new venue. This is a real location in almost all respects. What I missed reading this as a child was the context. Commander Walker gets an urgent summonds from the navy. As an adult, looking at the date of publication, I see that the book came out in November 1939. This was immediately after WWII was declared by Britain and Commander Walker was obviously very busy!
The plot of this book uses the usual Ransome themes, sailing exploration and a human sacrifice! You may not learn as much about sailing in this one, but that's all been covered in the others. As usual some of the main characters are strong females, in this case two!
Read and enjoy!