A swashbuckling treasure hunting adventure featuring not only a Swallow but a Peter Duck!
Peter Duck – the blurb
The Swallows and Amazons, as well as Captain Flint and the ancient able seaman Peter Duck, set sail on the Wild Cat bound for the Channel. But they are shadowed by the Viper, manned by none other than Black Jake – a beastly pirate with a dark plan. Can the children race ahead and uncover the buried treasure before the pirate? Can they survive storms, earthquakes, crabs and even a waterspout and make it home?
All aboard
Those of you who follow Book Social will know that Swallows and Amazons is one of my all time favorite books. So when I saw a copy of Peter Duck (the third in the series) when on holiday in the Lake District (yes it was THAT long ago) I just had to buy it. Familiar faces all return along with some new ones including retired sailor Peter Duck. It’s the holidays and the plan is to sail on Captain Flint’s boat, the Wild Cat, round the south of England. But this is the Swallows we are talking about and where there are Swallows, there is treasure!
Isn’t port a drink?
The book starts off very heavy on the sailing/boat elements. Whereas this was done away with quite quickly in Swallows and Amazons it continued and continued some more in Peter Duck. I got to page 100 and wondered whether I was reading a sailing manual in disguise. Most children in this day and age have very little exposure to boats (we took a row boat around Windermere if that counts) so would get very little out of the initial third. It does make me question whether they would continue to read on. When the story does get going there are pirates and treasure hunting galore but it takes a while to find.
Home alone on a desert island
I did raise an eyebrow at the thought of two men sailing to the Caribbean (yep you read that right) with 7 children only 2 of whom were related to them. No parents knew the whereabouts of the children who were in peril at least half of the time. Yes things were different back then but SO different?
Belief suspended, the latter half of the book does give way to the more familiar as a proper treasure hunt ensues. But part of the charm with Swallows was the imaginary element. When they spoke of grog and pirates it was all part of the wonder that is child’s play. With Peter Duck it was all real, which made it confusingly more unbelievable. Some of it was pretty brutal as well. I much preferred the gentile boat capturing and weather watching of Swallows. You see I’m talking about Swallows and using words like ‘gentile’, there was nothing of the sort in Peter Duck.
Three times the charm
The latter half was tense, it is without doubt adventurous but there was too much sail and not enough camp construction for me. If I knew anything about sailing I could probably come up with some sort of sail based pun right now but I don’t and that’s the problem. I’m still a fan, I will read the others in the series – I seem to have skipped the second in the series Swallowdale for some reason – but Peter Duck will not hold a place in my heart quite like Swallows and Amazons. I’m sorry Mr Duck.
