Re-reading this first in the series now, I realize that one of the reasons these never caught on (or were never published?) in the U.S. must be Titty’s name. She’s usually referred to as “able seaman,” but I can see American middle-schoolers howling over a name that I took and take for granted. But I didn’t know until looking it up right now (on the Arthur Ransome wikia<\/a>) that it’s not a shortening of a longer name, but comes from “Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse”<\/a> (a poem I knew from my much-loved edition of Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales<\/a>). I’d tried to pick this up a few times since my childhood but hadn’t stuck with it, so I was surprised how well it held up now. The Walker family sails a boat, camps on an island, plays capture-the-boat with the two Blackett girls (Nancy the pirate captain, my hero!), and prove their innocence in a houseboat burglary. It was a compelling plot even at the age of 46, and I still identify strongly with John’s pride, Susan’s sense of responsibility, Titty’s thirst for solitary adventure, Roger’s happy-go-lucky enjoyment, Nancy’s toughness, and Peggy’s desire to follow her lead despite her marshmallow core. And there are 11 more to enjoy again! Whee!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Re-reading this first in the series now, I realize that one of the reasons these never caught on (or were never published?) in the U.S. must be Titty’s name. She’s usually referred to as “able seaman,” but I can see American middle-schoolers howling over a name that I took and take for granted. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}