Secret Water, Arthur Ransome

This must be a re-read, because I remember one scene from it vividly; however, it's the only scene I remember. The rest is unfamiliar, possibly because it's a little too repetitive; the Swallows set up camp with an overall plan (mapping an inland sea), encounter sympathetic local children with boats, the Amazons arrive, the plan evolves to allow for a set-piece drama, etc etc etc. The overlay of pretending to be explorers vs the locals being natives/savages is a bit teeth-jarring in terms of stereotypes, which doesn't help..


The scene I remember is the most tense of the book, a trip across a tidal causeway with the tide coming in, and my memory of reading it before is blurred with a memory of the children's library I grew up in (not literally. from age 10 or so my sister and I went to this library every day after school until our parents finished work and picked us up), although in my memory I'm standing in the wrong part of the library to be reading this book. One of those quirks of memory, probably. I'm still (very slowly) testing the theory that I have read all the Arthur Ransomes before; still to come, Peter Duck and The Big Six. I think. Possibly I just spent my childhood re-reading Swallowdale, Winter Holiday and We Didn't Mean to go to Sea.