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    Pigeon Post
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    Pigeon Post
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    Pigeon Post
    Ebook416 pages5 hours

    Pigeon Post

    By Arthur Ransome

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For anyone who loves sailing and adventure, Arthur Ransome’s classic Swallows and Amazons series stands alone. Originally published in the UK over a half century ago, these books are still eagerly read by children, despite their length and their decidedly British protagonists. We attribute their success to two facts: first, Ransome is a great storyteller and, second, he clearly writes from first-hand experience. Independence and initiative are qualities any child can understand and every volume in this collection celebrates these virtues.

    The crew’s on holiday for their sixth adventure, and they turn their energies to mining for gold, aided by pigeon messengers Homer, Sophocles, and Sappho. The adventurers comb the nearby hills for a fabled lost claim, while being shadowed by a mysterious figure they dub “squashy hat.” Undeterred by drought, sudden brushfires, and the continuing presence of Squashy Hat, the young prospectors persevere in their quest — with surprising results. Full of the dangers and dark adventures of old mines and forgotten claims, Pigeon Post has an irresistible appeal to the persistent explorer in every child.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid R. Godine, Publisher
    Release dateNov 30, 2018
    ISBN9781567926392
    Unavailable
    Pigeon Post

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    Reviews for Pigeon Post

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      In this book the focus is prospecting "for gold" in the hills above the lake, rather than sailing on the lake. The original Swallows and Amazons are joined by Dick and Dot Callum, first introduced in Winter Holiday. Another new theme is the use of carrier pigeons to link the camp of the prospectors with their parents "the natives" below. Mother got this in paperback and I was glad to get it, as I had long owned Picts and Martyrs which follows it in the series.
    • 4/5
      A somewhat awkward book, though the adventures are real - some of them only real because of the stories they made up, though. Poor Timothy. The mining is cute; the camp, and Titty's Well, are great. Going through the Old Level - yeah. The youngsters don't care much, but John got a real shock - thank goodness they made it over the ridge in time. And good thing Susan didn't know until afterward. The whole thing with the metal is kind of weird - Dick being more blinkered than usual, never checking to see what else it might be. He really shows his youth. And then the fire to end it all, with real risks and not made-up ones. Oh, and the pigeons and their bell - not a major factor in the story, though necessary to let them go. Overall, as I said, a bit awkward - not a favorite, though it's enjoyable enough.
    • 4/5
      Another fun escapade with these young explorers. This time around, the children are prospectors, determined to discover gold before the Amazons' uncle comes home from South America. The plot is a little slow to get going (the well-meaning "natives" keep getting in the way); once the children settle into their camp, however, the action proceeds apace with spirit and humor. (There's a great subplot involving an unknown visitor Uncle Jim has sent on ahead, and the expectations that build up as the visitor keeps failing to appear.) Everything ends well as usual -- if not quite the way anybody expects -- and the children help out in a major way when not-so-natural disaster strikes. I love fantasy and magic, but it's also nice to read stories where regular Muggles can have adventures and even save the day every once in a while.
    • 5/5
      I re-read this after watching an episode of Time Team where they were digging on Elizabethan mine workings in the Lake District - and heard in my head Ransome's Slater Bob talking about "Queen Elizabeth's Dutchies" (i.e. the German or Deutsch miners). Here the Swallows, Amazons and Ds have to camp ashore for the beginning of the holidays so take up prospecting for gold (if they find it, they hope that the Amazon's uncle Captain Flint will stay home to mine it instead of heading overseas). The adventures are real and the children individual and resourceful in the face of real problems and dangers... I love this book and recommend it for anyone, adult or child.
    • 5/5
      The scene is again the Lake District, during the summer holidays, where a drought has caused lake levels to sink, and fires to have started. The Callums and Walkers are staying at Beckfoot, awaiting their parents to travel to the lake, and camping in the garden as Mrs Blackett has the house redecorated. The Blacketts' Uncle Jim is returning home after unsuccessful prospecting in South America, and, inspired, Nancy decides that before he arrives, all the explorers will have found gold for him.The story thus set up, the children explore the fells, encounter an enemy, move camp, prospect for gold, almost get buried in a mine working, and narrowly avert disaster. As with all Ransome's books, it's written in spare prose, and rarely a word is wasted. The description of the fire, and the desperate efforts to tackle the flames, are vivid, and give a sense of real danger. In my opinion, one of the best children's books ever written.
    • 5/5
      One of the Top 3 Ransome books. I read this one over and over. I love the idea of the mining expedition, and the Swallows, Amazons, and D's are all present.
    • 4/5
      I borrowed this from my mum at Christmas... it's the sixth book in the Swallows & Amazons series. And it's filled with serious business! People nearly die lots of times! The Swallows, Amazons and D's decide to spend their holiday mining for gold, they dig a well, they make charcoal... it all sounds a bit too much like hard work to me for a summer holiday! But I'm sure my holidays wouldn't be eventful enough for them. I actually still get pretty freaked out by the dowsing bit and by the stuff about fire.
    • 5/5
      There is very little sailing in this sixth instalment in Arthur Ransome’s marvellous series of books set in the early 1930s and featuring the Swallows and Amazons, together with the Ds. The Walker children and Dick and Dorothea Callum have made their way to the Lake District at the beginning of the summer holidays. The Swallow is not yet available, however, and as the eight children would leave the Amazon heavily overcrowded they have decided instead to explore the High Topps, the moor land overlooking the lake. Nancy and Peggy have been making preparations to explore some of the old abandoned mine working that are scattered all over the moorland, in the belief that they might be able to prospect for gold. Their mother is concerned about them camping too far away from home to be in regular contact, which is where the pigeons come in. The Amazons have acquired three homing pigeons which they will take with them, despatching one each day with a message, and then sending someone back home each fourth day to retrieve them and collect further stores. An added complication is the prolonged drought that has beset the area, leaving the moors as dry as tinder, and bring the threat of heathland fires.Ransome develops the story brilliantly. He clearly understands children’s approach to life and he never patronises them., The prose is simple and lucid, and he captures the relationships between the different children with great facility. The children are immensely resourceful, but in a perfectly plausible manner. That is, perhaps, one aspect of the book that dates the novel. No-one seems to question the propriety of allowing a group of eight children to camp unattended out on the moors. While their ages are never explicitly stated, I imagine that Roger, the youngest, was probably nine or ten, while Nancy and John, the oldest two, are probably twelve or thirteen at most. In Britain in 2016, social services would be intervening, and their families would be under investigation for neglect.The novel does demonstrate Ransome’s own imagination, and his deep understanding of the way that children’s imagination works. All of the Swallows, Amazons and the Ds allow themselves to be absorbed into the world that they have created, in which the local village becomes ‘Rio’, corned beef becomes ‘pemmican’ and bottles of ginger beer become ‘grog’. Similarly, once they are camping on the High Topps they become utterly immersed in the world of prospecting, defending their discovering and terrified of rivals ‘jumping’ their claim. Ransome’s characters were clearly all very well read, and raised on adventure stories of the same calibre as his own works.It is well over forty years since I first read this book. At that time, I thought it was the best in this series, and one of my all-time favourites. I was gratified to find that those views still hold true.
    • 5/5
      It's the Swallows' third summer in the Lakes, and once again Ransome is faced with the challenge of not writing Swallows and Amazons again. This time the reasoning is that the rather scatter-brained Mrs Blackett is sole responsible adult in charge of all eight children. Uncle Jim and the other parents are all otherwise engaged — Dick and Dorothea seem to be having a particularly bad year for seeing their parents, with four holidays away on their own and the rest of the year at boarding school. As she's also supervising the redecoration of the house at Beckfoot, Mrs B decides that it would be unwise to allow them to go off to camp on the island, so they have to think of something less dangerous. So they come up with gold-mining...This idea works rather better than you might expect. As others have said, this is one of the highspots of the Swallows and Amazons series. Practically no sailing, but a lot of incident and variety. There's a comic misunderstanding at the core of the plot, and Ransome is careful not to give away what it is (of course, you'll see it coming if you've read the book before, so it's not quite as much fun to re-read as some of the others). There's a mysterious stranger who gives a John Buchan/Riddle of the Sands flavour to the book, with a lot of clandestine observation and scout-work on the moors (in a very Buchanish touch, the children know the man only as "squashy hat").Ransome takes advantage of having the full set of eight children to work with by bringing out a few of the more obscure characters and putting John and Nancy in the background a bit. Dick is definitely the key character this time, all-too-conscious of how heavily the others rely on his inevitably somewhat patchy technical knowledge of metallurgy and geology. Titty has a memorable chapter to herself as well, and Roger gets plenty to do: he's not just the random element of chaos that he is reduced to in many of the books, but a believable small boy we can identify with. Even the infuriatingly-competent Susan gets to display her human side a few times.The pigeons turn out to be a bit less important to the story than we think they're going to be, but they provide a bit of comedy. They provide a bit of a puzzle, too. Playing at being pirates is not very surprising behaviour for a tomboyish, rural, middle-class girl like Nancy, with plenty of access to boats and to adventure stories, but in British culture pigeon-keeping is something very strongly associated with urban, working-class men. You could easily imagine that Ransome knew people who kept pigeons when he was a child in Leeds, but it's very odd that Nancy's uncle should think of giving her a pigeon. But we shouldn't complain about it, it makes for a great story.
    • 5/5
      A childhood classic that I read again recently and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. As an adult, I can see how Nancy creates her own games for them all. The mining is a game, and made more fun by having a possible claim-jumper. But Nancy is also mature enough to know where the game ends - they rapidly work alongside the 'enemy' when it is important to do so.Definitely a keeper and I'll be going back to re-read more books in the series.It's strange now, to see how much the world has changed. Not only the lack of mobile phones, but even land lines were rare when this book was written. Cars were few on the road, camping was incredibly basic with no gas stoves, etc.A slower paced world, and maybe the better for it.