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  • Published: 6 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9781448155309
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512

Winter Holiday




Winter holidays can be just as fun as summer with the Swallows and Amazons!

'You know what it's like. Dark at teatime and sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays.'

Or so Nancy thinks. Then the lake ices over completely and the Swallows and Amazons, along with Dick and Dorothea - ‘the D’s’ - plan a race to find the North Pole. How will they reach it if they can’t sail? By sledges of course! But when a blizzard blows up and there is a mix up about signals, the D’s disappear into the Arctic night. Disaster looms. Can the Swallows and Amazons save their friends?

BACKSTORY: Crack the Swallows and Amazons' code and learn all about the real Arctic exploration that inspired this book.

  • Published: 6 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9781448155309
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512

About the author

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian.

After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.

Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.

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Praise for Winter Holiday

Winter Holiday is my favourite Arthur Ransome, the one into which I want to walk even now - if only it would just snow. Its depiction of the Lake District in winter is totally compelling. You can teach yourself to skate from Ransome's descriptions of the first tentative pushes across the ice-bound tarn

Guardian

Full of nostalgia for a time when summer holidays seemed to go on forever, unaccompanied children could sail off on adventures together, and ginger beer was ever-present. And the appeal of such things still remains

Independent

'Nothing ever happens in the winter holidays’, says Nancy Blackett. But how wrong can she be? When the lake freezes over, the Swallows and Amazons decide the time is right to race to the North Pole. Clearly this is no weather for boats so they set out on sledges. The children discover that lakes without boats can be exciting after all. But a sudden blizzard turns excitement to danger as two new friends go missing. Winter Holiday (Vintage Classics, £6.99) by Arthur Ransome is 80 years old but it remains a delightfully fresh read

Jane Sandall, Scotsman

So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics!

National Association for the Teaching of English

The children are kind to each other, the parents are loving, and there's no violence - it's hard to imagine nowadays, and it's all the more charming for that

Daily Telegraph

Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome is 80 years old but it remains a delightfully fresh read

Scotsman