Missee Lee (Puffin Books)

...This is a great adventure story, but definitely has racist elements. However, like the racism in the Little House books towards the native American Indians, it may well be a result of ignorance rather than malice.

Once again Arthur Ransome comes up with a grand adventure for the children he introduced in his earlier books. This time they are sailing a small schooner through little-charted waters in the China Sea. After a disastrous fire on board, they are washed ashore, along with Captain Flint (Nancy and Peggy's Uncle Jim if you are not familiar with these books) on a small chain of islands and captured by Chinese pirates. Those over-sensitive souls among us may find the depiction of Chinese natives, and the rendition of their accents, less than PC, but I read this book for the first time at the impressionable age of nine and I don't think it coloured my attitude to Chinese people in any negative way. What this books does, as superbly as all Mr Ransome's others, is convey the excitement that children feel if they are allowed a little freedom. Our poor children today, molly-coddled and over-protected by our anxious selves can only dream of adventures such as these. Luckily, they have books like this to transport them to such faraway places where we, as parents, cannot interfere.

I read this book as a child and they helped me to get interested in reading. I then went on to read every book in the series. About four years ago, I attend an international school's meeting in the Hague Holland and was sitting with 4 other teachers supervising students in a hotel at night and we got to talking about our favorite children's book. I named this book and two others agreed. I think that it was this book that fired me up to want to have adventure and is responsible for me becoming an international educator. I have spent most of my life searching for that thrill of adventure that I first experienced in these books. I recommend this series to you.

I am Roger Bowman,it's been ten years since i've read these books.I'm now reading them again for my girlfriend,and enjoying them as much now as i did the first fifteen times as a child-teenager. Were it not for this series i would not know how or have the desire to read books today... Thank-you! My mother would read a few pages and say "Good-night Roger" and leave me alone with the book and i just had to know what happened next. That's when i learned to read. Maybe the fact that one of the children was named Roger gave me the incentive to follow these children on their adventures,i just had to see what happened to the boy Roger next.