'Youll start with a blank map, that doesnt do more than show roughly whats water and what isnt

When the Walker familys holiday plans are ruined by Daddy having to work, the whole summer seems lost at sea. But a dull holiday for the children is too miserable to bear so their parents hatch a plan. The Swallows are to be marooned on an island with only a blank map and a little sailing dinghy. Their task? To explore and chart the area, avoid the endless mud and survive. And what do they discover? Well, they might not be as alone as they first thought

Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can find out about some real life explorers!

Vintage Childrens Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites fromPeter PanandAlices Adventures in Wonderlandto modern classics such asThe Boy in the Striped PyjamasandThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884. He had an adventurous life - as a baby in he was carried by his father to the top of the Old Man of Coniston, a peak that is 2,276ft high! He went to Russia in 1913 to study folklore and in 1914, at the start of World War I he became a foreign correspondent for the Daily News. In 1917 when the Russian Revolution began he became a journalist and was a special correspondent of theGuardian. He played chess with Lenin and married Trotsky's personal secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. On their return to England, he bought a cottage near Windermere in the Lake District and began writing children's stories. In a 1958 author's note, Ransome wrote: I have been often asked how I came to writeSwallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above . . . Going away from it we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind's eye, could see the beloved sky-line of great hills beneath it. Swallows grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself. He published the first of his children's classics, the twelve Swallows And Amazons books, in 1930. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book,Pigeon Post. He died in 1967.

The Swallows are marooned with just a little sailing boat for company - will they survive their chance to become true explorers?