Strong Winds series facts for kids
Book covers of the Strong Winds trilogy: The Salt-stained Book, A Ravelled Flag, Ghosting Home.
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| Author | Julia Jones |
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| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
The Strong Winds series is a series of children's books written by English author Julia Jones. The books reference many of the settings and characters of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The books use adventure stories about sailing to provide action and structure amid developing themes of foster care, mental illness, disability and corrupt officialdom.
Contents
Plot summary
Volume 1 The Salt-stained Book
Donny Walker (aged 13) and his deaf mother Skye travel in a campervan to Shotley to meet Donny's long-lost great aunt Ellen. Following a car accident authorities place Donny in foster care and his mother in a psychiatric hospital. Donny forms friendships with local children, "discovers his inborn prowess as a sailor" and evades a local police officer to find his great aunt.
Volume 2 A Ravelled Flag
Donny and his growing number of allies are still battling the school and social services, but what first appeared to be immovable bureaucracy is gradually revealed to be criminal malice. Some of the first episode's villains are developed as actively conspiring against heroes Donny and Skye, with the motive of exploiting illegal immigrants.
Volume 3 Ghosting Home
In the conclusion Donny becomes aware that a mysterious red-and-white schooner is a serious threat to his family. Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Min leaves his village in China on the first part of a journey which he hopes will take him to England in search of his mother who left the village seven years before.
Volume 4 The Lion of Sole Bay
In this un-numbered sequel, previous minor character Luke was planning to spend a school vacation with his father restoring an old fishing boat but his father is seriously injured in a boatyard accident. Meanwhile, interest among boat-mooring neighbours in a Suffolk pub sign originally from a warship captured in the Battle of Sole Bay in 1672 shows that historic animosity between the English and the Dutch hasn't entirely worked itself out.
Volume 5 Black Waters
Xanthe Ribiero is in hiding. She has made an unforgiving enemy and has taken refuge on a redundant lightship in the Essex marshes. The river Blackwater sparkles in the early summer sun and the weather is set fair for sailing, but the children Xanthe has come to teach are oddly fearful – as if they are in hiding too.
Volume 6 Pebble
Liam's home life is complicated; he struggles to protect his family against unseen dangers but a half-term trip up the Suffolk coast in the Chinese junk Strong Winds triggers a series of events.
Settings
Locations for the narrative include Leeds and Colchester; Pin Mill, Alton Water, River Deben and Shotley, Suffolk; Lowestoft, Zeebrugge.
Creating the series
In 2006, while working on a PhD thesis, Julia Jones decided to become a writer of adventure stories like the Swallows and Amazons series of Arthur Ransome she had read as a child. The Salt-Stained Book, the first part of a planned trilogy, was released in June 2011. Jones hoped the trilogy would "inspire a new generation of children to mess about in boats." A fourth book followed the original trilogy, to make it a 'series'.
Allusion
The books contain frequent allusion to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series as well as other works, particularly R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.
Awards
- In January 2013, The Salt-stained Book was the monthly winner of The Book Awards people's choice.
