Nautical fi ction
for children
Arthur Ransome stories still dominate the genre of children’s nautical
fi ction – but there are new writers and ideas, as Kathy Catton reports
SAILING STORIES
A
s a parent of a sailing-mad
10-year-old, I’m always on
the lookout for nautical
titles to quench my son’s
thirst for reading, which is
his second favourite thing to do. But
almost a century on from the fi rst
volume of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows
and Amazons series, why is it so hard
to fi nd contemporary writers of nautical
fi ction for children?
A search online at Waterstone’s revealed
only three titles under the category ‘sailing
fi ction’, one of which was a 27-page
‘get-into-reading’ book. Another had
nothing to do with sailing, and was only
listed because the publisher’s name had
the word ‘sailing’ in its title.
Delving deeper I found Quentin Blake’s
A Sailing Boat in the Sky and a yet to be
published picture book Sailing to America
by Robert Gernhardt.
So I reached out to a few sailing fi ction
children’s authors to fi nd out what books
have infl uenced or made an impression
on them within this genre.Kathy Catton grew up
around boats, sailing
with her family out of
Chichester Harbour,
but now lives on the
Banks Peninsula in the
South Island of New
Zealand. A freelance writer and sub-
editor, she’s most likely to be found in
or around a yacht club, supporting her
son’s love of sailing.ABOUT THE AUTHOR