Book Adventurers: Alison Kinchin

Posted on 29 June 2016

This summer, we’re asking children – where will you go?

To become a book adventurer this summer, all children have to do is download our free make-at-home passport. Once they’ve started reading and checking places off their lists, they can cut out the stamps included in the passport pack and glue them in. We’ve left space to write on each stamp where you’ve traveled that week – whether it’s Narnia, the circus or the wild plains of Africa!

To help them and you get inspired, we’ve asked some of the Scholastic staff to tell us about the book that never failed to take them to another world when they were children. First up, we hear from our Inventory Manager Alison Kinchin!

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

In the long hot summer of 1976, I was 11 years old. I lived in a small village with no shops and few other children, so books were my refuge. I’d grown out of the Famous Five and Secret Seven novels, and was looking for the next series to read. My mother suggested I try Swallows and Amazons.

When the fortnightly Library Van made its first visit of the summer, I picked out the first two in the series – Swallows and Amazons, and Swallowdale. I couldn’t wait to get home to make a start.

I used to sit in the garden, in the shade of the apple trees, with the birds and insects all around and lose myself in the world within the books. From the first page, with Roger tacking across the field towards home, to their first voyage on the Swallow and then camping on the Island and meeting the Amazons, I was completely entranced.

I finished the first book in two days and then had to ration myself with only a couple of chapters of Swallowdale a day, to make it last until the Library van came back and I could borrow the next ones in the series!

Swallows and Amazons is available on the Scholastic shop here.