'Like to spend a night in the Goblin?

The Swallows are staying on the Suffolk coast while they wait for their father to return home from China. But although the harbour is bursting with bobbing yachts, barges and steamers, this year there's no chance of any sailing for the landlocked Swallows. That is until they rescue young Jim Brading and his boat theGoblinfrom a sticky situation and to their delight are recruited as crew members. Mother agrees they can go, on one condition they absolutely must not sail out past Beach End Buoy and into the open sea

Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can test your knowledge of the book, and learn all about the art of sailing!

Vintage Childrens Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites fromPeter PanandAlices Adventures in Wonderlandto modern classics such asThe Boy in the Striped PyjamasandThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884. He had an adventurous life - as a baby in he was carried by his father to the top of the Old Man of Coniston, a peak that is 2,276ft high! He went to Russia in 1913 to study folklore and in 1914, at the start of World War I he became a foreign correspondent for the Daily News. In 1917 when the Russian Revolution began he became a journalist and was a special correspondent of the Guardian. He played chess with Lenin and married Trotsky's personal secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. On their return to England, he bought a cottage near Windermere in the Lake District and began writing children's stories. In a 1958 author's note, Ransome wrote: I have been often asked how I came to writeSwallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above . . . Going away from it we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind's eye, could see the beloved sky-line of great hills beneath it. Swallows grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself. He published the first of his children's classics, the twelve Swallows And Amazons books, in 1930. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book,Pigeon Post. He died in 1967.

The Swallows are out on the water once again, this time in a bigger boat and on a bigger adventure than ever before>