![]() Book covers of the Strong Winds trilogy: The Salt-stained Book, A Ravelled Flag, Ghosting Home. | |
Author | Julia Jones |
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Country | UK |
Language | English |
The Strong Winds series is a series of children's books written by English author Julia Jones. The books reference many of the settings and characters of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The books use adventure stories about sailing to provide action and structure amid developing themes of foster care, mental illness, disability and corrupt officialdom.
Donny Walker (aged 13) and his deaf mother Skye travel in a campervan to Shotley to meet Donny's long-lost great aunt Ellen. Following a car accident authorities place Donny in foster care and his mother in a psychiatric hospital. Donny forms friendships with local children, "discovers his inborn prowess as a sailor" [1] and evades a local police officer to find his great aunt. [1] [2]
Donny and his growing number of allies are still battling the school and social services, but what first appeared to be immovable bureaucracy is gradually revealed to be criminal malice. Some of the first episode's villains are developed as actively conspiring against heroes Donny and Skye, with the motive of exploiting illegal immigrants. [3]
In the conclusion Donny becomes aware that a mysterious red-and-white schooner is a serious threat to his family. Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Min leaves his village in China on the first part of a journey which he hopes will take him to England in search of his mother who left the village seven years before. [4] [5]
In this un-numbered sequel, previous minor character Luke was planning to spend a school vacation with his father restoring an old fishing boat but his father is seriously injured in a boatyard accident. Meanwhile, interest among boat-mooring neighbours in a Suffolk pub sign originally from a warship captured in the Battle of Sole Bay in 1672 shows that historic animosity between the English and the Dutch hasn't entirely worked itself out. [6]
Xanthe Ribiero is in hiding. She has made an unforgiving enemy and has taken refuge on a redundant lightship in the Essex marshes. The river Blackwater sparkles in the early summer sun and the weather is set fair for sailing, but the children Xanthe has come to teach are oddly fearful – as if they are in hiding too. [7]
Liam's home life is complicated; he struggles to protect his family against unseen dangers but a half-term trip up the Suffolk coast in the Chinese junk Strong Winds triggers a series of events. [8]
The setting is aboard a Russian oligarch’s superyacht off Norway, and the status of Donny’s foes has similarly grown, from the suspect social worker and bullying policeman of The Salt-Stained Book to include the Russian President. [9]
Locations for the narrative include Leeds and Colchester; Pin Mill, Alton Water, River Deben and Shotley, Suffolk; Lowestoft, Zeebrugge.
In 2006, while working on a PhD thesis, Julia Jones decided to become a writer of adventure stories like the Swallows and Amazons series of Arthur Ransome she had read as a child. [10] [11] The Salt-Stained Book, the first part of a planned trilogy, was released in June 2011. [12] Jones hoped the trilogy would "inspire a new generation of children to mess about in boats." [11] A fourth book followed the original trilogy, to make it a 'series'. [13]
The books contain frequent allusion to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series as well as other works, particularly R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha . [3]
Cassandra Jardine, reviewing for The Daily Telegraph , wrote "The Salt-Stained Book... is not just a homage to the Swallows and Amazons stories. Donny and Anna, Jones's fictional characters, live in the contemporary world, escaping social workers, rather than pirates. There's far more emotion than in Ransome's books" but "they share the same confident, risk-taking spirit..." [11] Amanda Craig, reviewing The Salt-stained Book for The Times "...wasn't sure about the historical framing device that gives the novel its title..." but wrote "Among so many children's books that seem machine-tooled, Jones's novel feels like a hand-crafted toy, whose occasional wonkiness only adds to its appeal." [1]
John Wilson, reviewing A Ravelled Flag in the Otago Daily Times described the frequent allusions to Ransome, writing "the writer's skill is evident in the constant references not being too leaden in their effect" [3] while Dennis Hamley, for Armadillo magazine commented "All authors, whether consciously or not, are writing in a tradition. Now and again it is overt so that a book becomes a conscious homage." [14]
Sue Magee reviewing Ghosting Home for The Bookbag wrote "...the series has never fought shy of taking on the big issues. This time it's people-trafficking and Julia Jones doesn't patronise her readers... It's likely to provoke a lot of discussion." [5]
Peter Willis, reviewing Voyage North for Yachting Monthly wrote "With Jones’s dense and dynamic writing and her unfettered imagination, plus its eager engagement with the social zeitgeist of our times, the series deserves to be recognised as on a par with Philip Pullman and very much a 21st-century classic of grown-up children’s literature." [15]
Books in the Strong Winds series: [13]
Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. The entire series remains in print, and Swallows and Amazons is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.
The Swallows and Amazons series is a series of twelve children's adventure novels by English author Arthur Ransome. Set in the interwar period, the novels involve group adventures by children, mainly in the school holidays and mainly in England. They revolve around outdoor activities, especially sailing. Literary critic Peter Hunt believes it "changed British literature, affected a whole generation's view of holidays, helped to create the national image of the English Lake District and added Arthur Ransome's name to the select list of classic British children's authors." The series remains popular and inspires visits to the Lake District and Norfolk Broads, where many of the books are set.
Nancy Blackett is a 28-foot (8.5 m), 7-ton, Bermuda rigged sailing cutter built in 1931. The boat is now owned and operated by The Nancy Blackett Trust.
The Arthur Ransome Society, also known by its acronym Tars, and whose members refer to themselves as Tars, is a society whose goals are to "celebrate the life, promote the works and diffuse the ideas of Arthur Ransome". It is based at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, England. Arthur Ransome is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books in the 1930s and 1940s.
Peter Duck is the third book in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The Swallows and Amazons sail to Crab Island with Captain Flint and Peter Duck, an old sailor, to recover buried treasure. During the voyage the Wildcat is chased by another vessel, the Viper, whose piratical crew are also intending to recover the treasure.
Great Northern? is the twelfth and final completed book of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. It was published in 1947. In this book, the three families of major characters in the series, the Swallows, the Amazons and the Ds, are all reunited in a book for the first time since Pigeon Post. This book is set in the Outer Hebrides and the two familiar Ransome themes of sailing and ornithology come to the fore.
Swallowdale is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome and first published by Jonathan Cape in 1931. The book features Walker siblings and Blackett sisters, camping in the hills and moorland country around a lake, with Maria Turner, the Blacketts' Great Aunt, acting as an antagonist. It is the second book in the Swallows and Amazons series; preceded by Swallows and Amazons and followed by Peter Duck.
Pigeon Post is an English children's adventure novel by Arthur Ransome, published by Jonathan Cape in 1936. It was the sixth of twelve books Ransome completed in the Swallows and Amazons series. He won the inaugural Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising it as the year's best children's book by a British subject.
Swallows and Amazons is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome first published on 21 July 1930 by Jonathan Cape. Set in the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, the book introduces the main characters of John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker (Swallows); as well as their mother, Mary; and their baby sister, Bridget. We also meet Nancy and Peggy Blackett (Amazons); their uncle Jim, commonly referred to as Captain Flint; and their widowed mother, Molly Blackett. It is the first book in the Swallows and Amazons series, followed by Swallowdale.
Secret Water is the eighth book in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. It was published on 28 November 1939.
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is the seventh book in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. It was published in 1937. In this book, the Swallows are the only recurring characters. They are staying with their Mother and baby sister Bridget in a new location, Pin Mill on the River Orwell upstream from the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich and are in Suffolk to meet their Father, Navy Commander Ted Walker who is returning overland from a posting in Hong Kong to take up a new posting at Shotley. (In Swallows and Amazons his ship was at Malta but under orders for Hong Kong.
Alton Water is a manmade reservoir located on the Shotley peninsula. It is the largest in Suffolk, with a perimeter of over 8 miles (13 km).
Missee Lee is the tenth book of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, set in 1930s China. The Swallows and Amazons are on a round-the-world trip with Captain Flint aboard the schooner Wild Cat. After the Wild Cat sinks, they escape in the boats Swallow and Amazon, but are separated in a storm. Both dinghies eventually end up in the lair of the Three Island pirates—Chang, Woo and Lee—where they are held prisoner by the unusual Missee Lee, the leader of the Three Island pirates.
Shotley is a village and civil parish 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Ipswich in the English county of Suffolk. It is in the Babergh district and gives its name to the Shotley peninsula between the Rivers Stour and Orwell. The parish includes the village of Shotley and the settlements of Shotley Gate and Church End. In 2011 civil parish had a population of 2,342.
Nancy Blackett is a fictional character in nine of the twelve juvenile novels in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of books. She acts as captain of the dinghy, Amazon and usually directing her friends in their various adventures. Nancy apparently has no real-world counterpart as an inspirational source for Ransome but appears to be completely the author's creation. Nancy is sometimes critically viewed as a subversive character for girl readers. The character appeared in a 1963 BBC television adaptation of Swallows and Amazons as well as in the 1974 and 2016 film adaptations of the book.
Julia Jones, formerly also known as Julia Thorogood, is an English writer, editor, book publisher and patient advocate.
Pin Mill is a hamlet on the south bank of the tidal River Orwell, on the outskirts of the village of Chelmondiston, on the Shotley peninsula in southern Suffolk. It lies within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is a designated Conservation Area. It is now generally known for the historic Butt and Oyster public house, and for sailing.
HMS Beckford (P3104) was one of 20 Ford-class patrol boats built for the Royal Navy in the 1950s.
Swallows and Amazons is a 1963 BBC children's television series based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Arthur Ransome, about the holiday adventures of two groups of children, the Swallows (Walkers) and the Amazons (Blacketts), sailing on a lake and camping on an island in the Lake District in the 1930s.
Swallows and Amazons is a 2016 British family adventure film directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and written by Andrea Gibb, based on Arthur Ransome's 1930 children's novel of the same name. The film stars Andrew Scott, Rafe Spall, Kelly Macdonald, Jessica Hynes, and Harry Enfield. Principal photography began on 21 June 2015 in the Lake District. The film, which was released on 19 August 2016, is the third audiovisual adaption of the novel; the first being a 6-part BBC TV series in 1963 and the second a 1974 film version.