Swallows and Amazons

Swallows and Amazons. By Arthur Ransome. London: Jonathan Cape. Pp.350. 7s. 6d. net.

Children's books are probably the most difficult of all to write; they are certainly the most difficult to review. For children alone can properly judge their worth, and children, very wisely, never review. An adult has to refer back to his own childhood and ask himself: Would I have enjoyed such a book then? The answer, in the case of "Swallow and Amazons," is very definitely, Yes. Moreover, the book is entirely charming quite apart from its qualities as child literature. This is rare; for, generally speaking, nothing makes drearier reading than the conscious juvenility of adults. There is something elephantine and clumsy about it, like Gladstone capering on all fours or a bishop playing Santa Claus. Mr. Ransome has the same magical power that Lewis Carroll had of being the child in terms of himself. He never talks down; never finds it necessary to be patronising or sentimental. And sentimentality is the most terrible pitfall that besets those who venture into the world of play. For just as Mr. Galsworthy delights Europe through the medium of Tauchnitz by showing it English ladies and gentlemen that exactly correspond with Europe's idea of English ladies and gentlemen, so your writer of children's books delights Montessori teachers and other moulders of the very young by showing them precisely their idea of children - an idea that bears about the same relation to real children as window-boxes do to gardens. For instance, Christopher Robin. Captain John and Mate Susan, and Able-seaman Titty, and Ship's Boy Roger are not at all like Christopher Robin. they are children. And the story of their adventures on a little island in the middle of an English lake is thrilling just because it is not fabulous. Unlike "Swiss Family Robinson," where the miraculous satisfaction of the family's slightest need strikes the most sanguine child as vaguely ridiculous and not at all convincing, the explorers in "Swallows and Amazons" are supplied with milk by a farmer only thinly disguised as one of the less hostile natives, and buy their lemonade over the country - a fact which does not at all prevent it from becoming vitriolic grog. That is to say, the book is the very stuff of play. It is make-believe such as all children have indulged in: even children who have not been so fortunate as to have a lake and a boat and an island but only a backyard amongst the semis of Suburbia.