Winter Holiday

A wonderful adventure story in which the main characters are children, but their struggles are no less real for that, as the author doesn't talk down to them. This is life as it was once lived, back in the early 20th century, long before mobile phones.

There's no sex or violence here, and indeed no villains. Our heroes are struggling only against their environment: an unusually cold winter, an attack of mumps that disables their leader, and the approaching end of the Christmas holidays, which gives them a deadline for all adventuring. They manage to find adventure in spite of it all.

This story also introduces two new characters to supplement the existing six (the Swallows and Amazons); and it gets plenty of mileage out of the new ones.

Really one of my favourite books. Thank you, Arthur Ransome—70 years older than me, and we'd have had little in common, but I appreciate his work.