Strong Winds Series of books by Julia Jones

If you like Arthur Ransome's books, the Strong Winds Series may be of interest to you (and there's a Mirror dinghy involved in it too). Julia Jones grew up in a family which owned one of Ransome's boats (Peter Duck), and when she was very young she slept in the space originally designed to hold Ransome's typewriter. It should be no surprise that she became a writer, and she has recently started writing Children's books which touch on the same territory as Ransome, and which also have many direct connections with his works. There are now four books in the series, but the first three are a trilogy (which I have just finished reading after discovering them by chance), the story being essentially about a boy who is wrongly taken away from his mother and put into the care system and who must try to get back to her, boats playing a key role in how he achieves this. The big question though is, are they any good?

Well, the first volume in the Strong Winds trilogy, The Salt-Stained Book, takes a long time to make a positive impact and led me to fear that I had bought somthing that was a little below publishable standard (my expectations hitting the floor when the main character first sails), but it improves as it goes along while the author gains more skill in writing fiction, and it delivers an ending which recovers the situation entirely - it certainly left me wanting to read more. The second volume, A Ravelled Flag, is of higher quality throughout, and the third volume, Ghosting Home, is superb. I think these books aren't getting as much attention as they deserve because the first one starts badly, but collectively they are right up there with the books of the best children's writers of today. They depart a little from the realism of Ransome (e.g. people see things in dreams that they shouldn't know about, and there are many unlikely coincidences in the way of links between the different people in the story who are flung together by chance), but there is plenty of sailing in them which will appeal to Ransome fans, and many of the locations will be familiar. If in doubt, borrow them all from a library first, but be sure to make allowances for the first book - there are many things in it that don't work, but it is definitely worth carrying on.