Posted by Claire on April 21, 2009 at 17:01:01 user Claire_Morgan.
In Reply to: Re: Peter Duck - an alternative. posted by Adam Quinan on April 21, 2009 at 13:07:28:
"As Peter Duck was the very first Ransome I ever read at the age of eight, the absence of a frame didn't bother me at all."
I had a similar experience, reading Secret Water first, at about age 11. It gave me an entirely different picture of the characters, particularly Roger, than I developed later. It was the American Macmillan edition with a cover illustration of the Swallows looking older than usual. (You can see a color version of it on page 88 of "A Ransome Book-Case", though what I saw was on the hardcover itself, and not in color). I was quite puzzled between the straight forward camping and surveying bits, and the more fantasy parts with 'savages' and the final battle. It also didn't help that the glued in frontispiece was one of those horrible inaccurate ones found here in the 1950's and 60's. If memory serves, it said something like, "When Commander Walker wanted to take a voyage in the Goblin and didn't want to take the children along, he 'marooned them on a desert island." Hmmmm. But I was intrigued by the Amazons and the reference to the "lake in the north".
So my introduction to the series was through one of the unusual setting books. I later found the Lippincott editions of S&A, SD, WD and CC with their wonderful Helene Carter illustrations and maps and I really loved those.