Swallows and Amazons Chapter X: A treaty of offence and defence
From Mae Thinks
This chapter is about making friends, and specifically, how to make friends when what you really want to do with your new friends is pretend to be enemies. It manages to illustrate this on several levels within not many pages, and it’s really quite clever. It’s also funny, which I think I missed when I was a child.
In the midst of all the love, I think it only fair to note that the children don’t always talk nicely to each other. Aside from “skip along, Roger”, which I think he quite likes at the moment (later books might hint at Roger’s adolescent rebellion), there’s a bit of “Peggy, you donkey”, and quite a lot of “shut up”. Telling one’s sibling to “shut up” is strongly discouraged in my household.
Strict and anachronistic parenting aside, though…