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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
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.
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.
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.
Critical reception
Cassandra Jardine, reviewing for The Daily Telegraph, wrote "The Salt-Stained Book... is not just a homage to the Swallows and Amazons stories. Donny and Anna, Jones’s fictional characters, live in the contemporary world, escaping social workers, rather than pirates. There’s far more emotion than in Ransome’s books" but "they share the same confident, risk-taking spirit...” Amanda Craig, reviewing The Salt-stained Book for The Times "...wasn’t sure about the historical framing device that gives the novel its title..." but wrote "Among so many children’s books that seem machine-tooled, Jones’s novel feels like a hand-crafted toy, whose occasional wonkiness only adds to its appeal."
John Wilson, reviewing A Ravelled Flag in the Otago Daily Times described the frequent allusions to Ransome, writing "the writer's skill is evident in the constant references not being too leaden in their effect" while Dennis Hamley, for Armadillo magazine commented "All authors, whether consciously or not, are writing in a tradition. Now and again it is overt so that a book becomes a conscious homage."
Sue Magee reviewing Ghosting Home for The Bookbag wrote "...the series has never fought shy of taking on the big issues. This time it's people-trafficking and Julia Jones doesn't patronise her readers... It's likely to provoke a lot of discussion."