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"There is plenty of excitement, a little danger, a quality of thinking, planning and fun which is delightful and stimulating." -"TLS"
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The tale is set in the children's Easter holidays, just a few months after the events of the preceding book. In it, Dick and Dorothea are anxious to learn the rudiments of sailing so that they can take a more active part in the fun when they next meet up with the Swallows and Amazons. Dick is also keen to do some bird watching. It is almost inevitable, therefore, that soon after arriving in Norfolk, they find therefore themselves tangled in up in (and helping out with) the troubles of the Coot Club - a group of local (boat-mad) children dedicated to the protection of the Broads' unique bird population.
Ransome loved the Norfolk Broads with a passion that possibly even exceeded his love of the Lake District. In this book, he paints a portrait of Norfolk, its waterways and the people who live on or by them, making plain his love for this unique environment and its way of life. The story centres on his concerns over their continuing destruction through ever-increasing tourism (and the increasingly thoughtless actions of its visitors), a major problem even 65 years ago. (It is far worse now, of course!) Unlike his Lake District stories, this one uses the real names of the places that feature in it and revels in describing them. Indeed, the book reads almost like a guidebook at times, although you barely notice this, for it is never anything less that engaging in its content. As always, Ransome combines both narrative and instructive content with consummate ease, tempered here with an excitement to the events that unfold. He weaves a tale that is as enthralling and captivating as ever, that will appeal to lovers of good tales whatever their age. The author's own pen-and-ink drawings are as charming as ever, too.
This is one of the few Swallows and Amazons books that can be read earlier in the sequence than it appears (if you really must) without major detriment to either itself or the earlier stories (except, perhaps "Winter Holiday"). You do need to have read it before most of the ones that follow it, however, as the events described here feature heavily in later ones.
Set on the Norfolk Broads during a long, hot summer in the early 1930's, the story will draw you into the world of the Norfolk Rivers and it's boats, of outlaws and heroism, of freindship and loyalty, where danger is lurking just around the corner.
Arthur Ransome writes in a very direct style, and is totally accurate in his descriptions of the handling of boats, which way the tides flow, and how to avoid being caught by the awful "Hullabaloos"!
As you read late into the night, unable to resist the temptation to read just one more chapter, you will become part of the crew, you will love the little sailing boats as much as the children in the story themselves do, and you will feel that you too could row a boat and hoist the sails. The characters are so real that by the end of the book, you will feel that you have known them all your life.
I first read Coot Club when I was about twelve, and indeed the magic of this and the other eleven "Swallows and Amazons" series has never left me. If ever there were books to inspire children to the outdoor life and to voyages of discovery, these are the ones. I should know, since it was these books that gave me my love of boats and the great outdoors that is with me to this day.
Set on the Norfolk Broads, the story follows Dick and Dorothea Callum who, keen to learn how to sail and to study wildlife, go to stay with their mother's friend, Mrs Barrable, on the yacht Teasel. They meet another child, Tom Dudgeon, a serious birdlife conservationist who gets into trouble by setting adrift a motor-cruiser of loud and tactless townies when they refuse to move when their boat which is moored threatening the live nest of a rare family of coots.
We follow Tom, Dick, Dorothea and their friends on an exciting adventure from the northern to the southern broads, very vividly described by the author with a real sense of place and life, purused by the police and the townies and climaxing in boat wrecks. What makes this novel unusual in the series is the conservationist theme and the argument that sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in, and take risks, despite conventional thinking of right and wrong. Highly recommended.
For those who wish to continue the story begun in Coot Club, there is one more chapter in the Swallows and Amazons series called The Big Six, almost as good.
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