Published in 1936, Pigeon Post was the first Carnegie Medal Winner.
My initial experience of Arthur Ransome and the world of Swallows and Amazons was on holiday at my grandmothers house in Denmark. Sadly, they were not considered ‘good enough’ for my local library to stock. As a result, for me, Arthur Ransome is associated with illicit holiday reading which is slightly ironic considering his very wholesome subjects of sailing, camping and general outdoorsy-ness.
I don’t think my local library was alone in condemning Arthur Ransome’s books, this was the late 70s, early 80s after all, a period in which everything middle-class and wholesome was very much out of fashion in favour of more ‘realistic’ and gritty novels. And then, the final nail in the coffin, his books were part of a series which, as Victor Watson points out in “Reading Series Fiction’ (2000), has always been considered slightly suspect and ‘second-rate’.
As a child I loved series fiction. Is there anything better than falling in love with a new author or series and then discovering that there are more? In fact, I still feel like this as an adult. Victor Watson describes how one of his Year 6 students explained that reading series fiction is like walking into a room full of friends and I think this is such an apt description of the attraction of series fiction.
Pigeon Post was very much of its time. Camping and tramping novels were popular from the 1930s to the 1960s. They were devoted to the excitements of hiking, exploring, boating, map-readingand the practicalities of camping. They were an expression of their age – Scouts and Girl guides flourished and were popular, (some) children had more freedom to be out and about on their own, and children needed to develop more self-sufficiency in the face of WWII.
Pigeon Post has a large cast of the usual Ransome characters from previous books, is set in the Lake district and is primarily concerned with camping (away from the adults) and goldprospecting with the danger element provided by uphill fires. Focus is on practical matters and it is not very introspective. It is interesting to read about the use of pigeons for messages and these are central to the plot as is the landscape that surrounds the children. Of course it suffers from old-fashioned sexual stereotypes – Susan gets a mincing machine for her birthday (!!) and appears to be thrilled with this which is inadvertently quite funny to a contemporary reader. I am pretty sure I didn’t read Pigeon Post as a child. As an adult, I find it perfectly readable, but not engrossing. In my personal view, probably a 5/10, though Ransome fans might be up in arms about this score.
Victor Watson points out that for about “thirty years children’s literature was for the most part a version of pastoral and sustained and essentially adult elegy on a massive scale for dearly loved and vanishing rural ways of life, mediated through fiction intended for young readers ” (p 79). I think it may have been longer – it is clearly evident in The Wind in the Willows (1908) and in the Carnegie Medal winners, we see it in Pigeon Post and it suffuces books like ‘The Little Grey Men’ and ‘The Little White Horse, both Carnegie Medal winners in the 1940s. I will be able to trace this as I read on and discover the themes of the later Carnegie Medal books. Advertisements. For me, though, this is not one of Ransome’s best books, so a 6.5 out of 10.
Mette Reads Carnegie 