Posted by Ed Kiser on January 03, 2003 at 04:25:03 from 205.188.209.46 user Kisered.
In Reply to: New Ransomites posted by Ross on January 03, 2003 at 00:52:13:
My mother brought home from the library Swallows and Amazons. She just happened to be looking through the selections, and saw this one had a map in the front cover. That map got her attention, and so brought it home to me. I loved the map; it enabled me to follow the action and understand better just where things were going on.
I was seven years old when I first read it. I remember that first line: "Roger, aged seven,..." It got my attention right from the start. Being that same age, I identified with Roger.
Here in the USA, these books don't seem to be all that commonly available. The library may have one or two others other than Swallows and Amazons. I was about 25 when I finally got my last book of the series, "Great Northern?", having gotten it at a USED book store.
It was during the war years (which war? WWII, or course...) that I became involved in trying to read each book of the series. Inside near the front was a list of other books by this same author, so that gave me the info necessary to continue the search for the others. The advantage I had, while reading Ransome for the first time, was that there was no TV, no video games, so reading became a great fun thing to do.
In this modern day however, there are many distractions. It seems to be rather hard to get the new generations to actually sit still for over five minutes and actually try to READ a BOOK, especially one that is not an assignment from school. I have four daughters (now all grown with rug-rats of their own) but was not successful in instilling in them any interest in these books whatsoever. Now that there are grandchildren, I encourage my children to try to get their little ones involved in these books, but having not read them themselves, they don't get the point as to why they should bother. It is really very frustrating to me to try to get them to do this, but I am getting very little cooperation in this project.
One of the interesting observations that have been made regarding the Harry Potter series is the complete surprise the parents have to realize their kids are actually interested in READING these books! It is as if they, too, feel that no one reads anymore, so when it does happen, it becomes quite an unusual activity, worthy of great fascination. These books are quite large, larger than the Ransome ones, but for some reason, young people WILL READ these through. Don't know how they were gotten to at least try it. Wish I knew, so perhaps something similar could be used to get my own to read Ransome.
It would be a sad thing indeed if, twenty years from now, that there are no one left that is interested in sharing these adventures any more. What a loss that would be.
Ed Kiser, South Florida