Coot Club

‘Let fly jib sheet! Slack away main! Fenders out!’

Dick and Dorothea – also known as The Ds – arrive in Norfolk all ready to learn how to sail. They couldn’t hope for a better teacher than Tom Dudgeon. But Tom is in a spot of trouble. After seeing the beastly Margoletta moored clean across the nests of his beloved coots, Tom set the motorcruiser adrift. Now the enemy have offered a bounty on his head. Can they save the birds’ nest from almost certain destruction? Will they avoid being caught by the awful Hullabaloos? Only some brave friends and quick thinking stands between them and disaster…

Includes exclusive material: In ‘The Backstory’ you can test your knowledge of the book, learn about the adventurous author and get some handy facts about birds and boats.

Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

In my early teens I read Arthur Ransome's books, Coot Club and The Big Six. They're set in Norfolk and the kids in the books go sailing on the Broads. They impressed me so much that I persuaded my father to take me on holiday to the Norfolk Broads where we had great fun teaching ourselves to sail, all on the impetus of Ransome's books. -- Aidan Chambers, Observer

I read the entire series of Arthur Ransome's children's books as a child and thought they were absolutely fantastic. They were full of adventure, all sorts of exciting things happened and they were truly inspirational -- Ellen MacArthur

Coot Club, that great classic of the Norfolk Broads, Evening News Norwich

Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian.

After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children's treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.

Ransome died in 1967. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in the southern Lake District.