Book review: Swallows and Amazons

You've probably read this yourself, and if you haven't, you should... or save it to read with your children. That's where I first read it, not having encountered it as a child. As usual I will leave the description to someone else, in this case wiki. And I found the original reviews.

It is of course a children's book, and oozes wholesomeness, but is good anyway. It is also a sort of manual for how to have fun, how to play, how to go exploring, but - at least if you're a child - not too obviously.

I'm struggling to find something to criticise. If you were class-conscious, you could complain about nurse, and the Dixons and their walk-on supporting parts in more important people's lives... but then again, daddy suffers the same fate, so it isn't class; it's just the inevitable book structure.

Maybe if you were anti-cultural-appropriation, or indeed against the White folk of Empire, you could dislike Uncle Jim and his collection of interesting native artifacts; but I still have the brass prismatic compass that my great-uncle had on service in India, and my mother has their top-hat box with "wanted on voyage" stickers on it. So I don't feel that way.