Kirjahaku

First published in 1930, Swallows and Amazons secured Arthur Ransome's reputation as one of the most influential children's authors of all time, yet prior to writing fiction he had had a turbulent career as a journalist and war correspondent in revolutionary Russia. In this refreshing account of Ransome's work, Alan Kennedy sets out to explain his enduring appeal, combining literary criticism with psychological expertise. Not only did Ransome apply a careful narrative theory to his works, his use of symbolism aligning them more with the modernist tradition than with the event-driven children's literature of contemporaries such as Richmal Crompton and Enid Blyton, but his novels are also more than usually autobiographical. This Kennedy ably demonstrates with reference to three particular challenges Ransome faced in a seriously conflicted life: his father's untimely death, his abandonment of his infant daughter in order to escape his catastrophic first marriage, and the innumerable compromises that kept him alive during his Russian exile. A Thoroughly Mischievous Person: The Other Arthur Ransome is the first study to tackle this matter systematically, giving casual and scholarly readers alike new insights into this fascinating figure.

"... there's no war here. All we have is people throwing their weight around. You surely didn't think country villages were full of nice kindly people helping each other? Our war is village toughs settling scores, eyeing you up, leering at you, pawing you if they get the chance. People you wouldn't have trusted with sixpence a while ago, standing outside the grocers with pistols in their belts, pushing you in the back. Everybody spying on everybody else." Lucy is a painter. She has everything: fame, money and reputation. She also has Oscar. At least, he has always been there. One fine day, she will do something about that. It was, as she says, hardly a love affair, more a kind of marriage. Perhaps, even war-torn France is safe enough on the Oscar front. But Lucy is deceiving herself. Set before and after the second world war in London, Edinburgh, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, Dundee and a remote village in war-time France, two painters struggle to come to terms with the casual brutality of war. A love story. Alan Kennedy's fourth novel - a masterly account of love, loss and reconciliation.

""It will all have gone. Erased. Forgotten. Like throwing letters in the fire."" The completion of Alan Kennedy's WW2 trilogy takes up the story one year after the events of A Time to Tell Lies. Following the disastrous visit to John Cabot in Oxford, Justine has vanished. Alex, posted to a Spy School in Scotland, finds life a kind of benign imprisonment. The Things That Are Lost chronicles the efforts of these two played-out SOE agents to rediscover each other. Set against the backdrop of the liberation of Paris in August 1944, they are aided by Madeleine, a woman haunted by the war-time compromises that have kept her alive. A love story exploring one of the most shocking secrets of the City of Light under German occupation. A secret so disturbing that, even now, Paris has decided it is best forgotten.

Originally published in 1984, this new introductory text fulfilled a need amongst both psychology and education students for a book which dealt with reading in a way that explored areas beyond the strictly practical question of how to teach children to read. Previous books on the psychology of reading had often concentrated on the analytic approach, in which reading had been seen in terms of a set of interconnected sub-skills and the experimental study of these components had become an end in itself. As a result, although great advances had been made in our understanding of certain aspects of the process, psychological studies of reading had increasingly been seen by teachers and others as unduly abstract.The Psychology of Reading goes back to first principles and attempts to set reading in its context alongside other cognitive activities, particularly those involving memory and perceptual processes. Professor Kennedy argues that it is wrong to set reading apart as a ‘skill’ when it needs to be understood against a background of work in cognitive psychology. Reading is a social phenomenon concerned with human communication, and in this context it must be seen in terms of an interaction between writer and reader. The book explores the nature of this interaction and the various stylistic and other devices which sustain the ‘contract’ between reader and writer. In particular, the psychological processes which allow a reader to make sensible assumptions about a writer’s intentions are dealt with in detail. No theory of reading, the author argues, should ignore the purpose of the enterprise. Similarly, explaining success and failure in teaching children to read may well hinge on an understanding of what children think reading is about. The style of this book is concise and largely non-technical. The Psychology of Reading will be welcomed as stimulating and demanding by experts and non-specialist general readers alike.

Originally published in 1984, this new introductory text fulfilled a need amongst both psychology and education students for a book which dealt with reading in a way that explored areas beyond the strictly practical question of how to teach children to read. Previous books on the psychology of reading had often concentrated on the analytic approach, in which reading had been seen in terms of a set of interconnected sub-skills and the experimental study of these components had become an end in itself. As a result, although great advances had been made in our understanding of certain aspects of the process, psychological studies of reading had increasingly been seen by teachers and others as unduly abstract.The Psychology of Reading goes back to first principles and attempts to set reading in its context alongside other cognitive activities, particularly those involving memory and perceptual processes. Professor Kennedy argues that it is wrong to set reading apart as a ‘skill’ when it needs to be understood against a background of work in cognitive psychology. Reading is a social phenomenon concerned with human communication, and in this context it must be seen in terms of an interaction between writer and reader. The book explores the nature of this interaction and the various stylistic and other devices which sustain the ‘contract’ between reader and writer. In particular, the psychological processes which allow a reader to make sensible assumptions about a writer’s intentions are dealt with in detail. No theory of reading, the author argues, should ignore the purpose of the enterprise. Similarly, explaining success and failure in teaching children to read may well hinge on an understanding of what children think reading is about. The style of this book is concise and largely non-technical. The Psychology of Reading will be welcomed as stimulating and demanding by experts and non-specialist general readers alike.

"...off his starboard bow clouds of spray were flying over the cabin of the boat in the bay, tethered to her unseen mooring ... a faint vibrating sound rumbled towards him across the lake. Something was wrong, he was sure of that, but he could not work out what and there was no time now to go and look..." It is July 1929. Four children arrive for a boating holiday to find themselves locked out, the lake flooded and their boat inaccessible. But they soon discover that is only the beginning of things. Minor mishaps slowly become more threatening. Trivial decisions turn out to have distant and dreadful consequences. Problems that appear solved gradually change to something more serious. In a thrilling climax, as the children discover the secret of the old boat moored in the bay, courage and resourcefulness are not enough and it is uncertain who will survive. Kennedy's first novel, published in 2010, was an affectionate homage to Arthur Ransome. It is re-issued here in a completely revised edition, including an Afterword.