It’s always summer somewhere in the world, but in the northern hemisphere summer is measured from the Summer Solstice in June to the equinox in the fall, and the warmth of summer may start earlier than the lengthening days of June. Summer is a time when people can and want to venture out, challenge boundaries, and change routines. Not always are the days lazy, sometimes they are hazy, and they may be crazy in their possibilities. The books in this collection represent summer in the northern hemisphere. They certainly suggest adventures, trying out new ideas, forging new ways of being, challenging boundaries, taking different perspectives, and making discoveries.
There are so many wonderful books out there celebrating summer that we broke the reviews into two parts. The second post of reviews will run next Monday.
Ages 4–8
Dozens of Cousins. Shutta Crum. 2013. Ill. David Catrow. Clarion.
Summer can be a time of get-togethers and family reunions, and Catrow illustrates the boisterous, hectic, exciting events of one of these events. “With beastie courage we greet our aunt/who grabs for us and says, “Glory be!/With beastie paws we tackle our uncles who tickle us and say, “Good golly!” The double-page illustrations rich in greens and blues have abundant detail of adults, babies, children, family pets, chickens, cats, with family on the lawn, at the tables, on the porches, talking, looking at pictures, and children playing, creating mayhem and mess, and swimming. The grandparents come solemnly to find children apologizing to unappreciative neighbors. Even the frogs get into the action, on the end sheets at the beginning, and in the pond next to the lounging, basking family members. If reunions have many activities going on at once, Catrow shows it in illustrations that are as humorous as they are detailed. Readers will return to this book again and again to look for more detail as they follow the antics of the family through the day and into the night of their reunion.
Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems. Paul B. Janeczko. 2014. Ill. Melissa Sweet. Candlewick.
Janeczko captures summer in the city, country, and at sea in this anthology. A poem by Charlotte Zolotow shows idyllic moments in a backyard garden depicted in shades of yellow and white with huge daisies and an orange cat. Another poem, “Subway Rush Hour,” by Langston Hughes suggests the heat of the city on summer’s long days: “Mingled/breath and smell./“So close/mingled/black and white/so near/no room for fear.” Sweet’s watercolor, graphite, and chalk pastel illustrations depict the shadow of the subway, yet the daisy bouquet in the hands of one passenger and the brightly colored wheels of the train suggest the bright light of summer. The detail of the book’s namesake written by J. Patrick Lewis captures detail in playful language: “When I was ten, one summer night,/The baby stars that leapt/Among the trees like dimes of light,/I cupped, and capped, and kept.” Melissa Sweet plays with perspective in the illustrations with the fireflies in the night yard on one page, and sandpipers scurrying along the beach, in view of the people lying on their brightly colored towels, on another. She incorporates collage that suggests narrative of the poems. The poems may be short through the four seasons but the richness of the illustrations will have readers coming back to them again and again.
Pool. JiHyeon Lee. 2015. Chronicle.
This large-format, wordless picture book opens on a scene of a crowded swimming pool and a lone swimmer standing on the deck who decides the only place to go is under them. In his diving deep he discovers another swimmer, and they swim into a world of fantastic creatures swimming in fantastic habitats. The illustrations, rendered in colored pencil, convey a playful quality of underwater imaginings. In one double-page spread, the two swimmers look across the empty pages at something the reader does not see, yet. On turning the page, the reader sees a whale. The adventure of the children continues as they swim back toward the legs of the crowd in the pool. The surprises do not end there, and the children are in for yet another one before the end of the book. The design of the book, with its white space on many of the pages and the careful detail, is sure to enchant and awe young readers.
Ages 9–11
Cody and the Fountain of Happiness. Tricia Springstubb. 2015. Ill. Eliza Wheeler. Candlewick.
Cody is happy with the first day of summer vacation even when her mother, who has a first day at a new job, tells her not to bring ants into the house, no screentime before 5, and no turning on the stove. Cody loves the morning quiet and she shares crusts of her toast with the ants outside. Her life becomes more complex when she befriends Spencer, looking for his aged, fat, deaf cat, MewMew, who is the catalyst for a growing friendship. Readers might think they don’t agree on anything as Cody and Spencer argue about everything including the preferred qualities of pets. Cody dreads going to camp, with its hardship of hikes and heat, but with her father, a trucker, gone for days at a time, and her older brother, Wyatt, with his doctor camp, Cody is on her own much of the time and spends time with Spencer and his grandmother, GG. Cody, Wyatt, and their mother work together to solve the problems of the household, yet her parents would like to create a different situation for her; her father, during a period home, hires a babysitter and Payton Underwood (whom Wyatt secretly adores) steps into their lives, yet Spencer and Cody have to solve other problems. A lark of a book, its themes related to family, identity, and making do while making friends will resonate with readers.
Finders Keepers. Shelley Tougas. 2015. Roaring Book.
At the beginning of summer and newly arrived at the lakeside in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Christa is morose because her parents are aiming to sell the family log cabin. The next-door neighbor, 11-year-old Alex from Arizona, has come with his parents to live with his grandfather, Edmund Clark, and run the family restaurant, currently a pizzeria. During Prohibition it was the best steak joint north of Chicago, according to Al Capone, who built an estate nearby, Ed Clark explains to the children. Christa is not impressed but is glad to have a friend who likes to make up adventures as much as she does, This novel includes their stories of the intrepid Chase TrueBlood and Buck Punch that reflect their real-life problems. Because both Christa’s parents have summer teaching jobs and her older sister Amelia works in the pizzeria, Christa is in the care of Edmund, whom she aptly names Grumpa, and the adventures of the two children, their finding out more about the family’s relationship with Capone, and the search for money he left with Edmund’s mother and father, begin. In the course of the events, Christa learns lessons in caring for her family. She also learns that everyone is just as sad as she is that their cabin is for sale. Readers will laugh at the capers and missteps the two sleuths get into; they will be breathless at the moments their discoveries land them in trouble; they will be surprised at the tumbling of unexpected events at the end. They will remember the friendship among Christa, Alex, and Grumpa.
Freedom Summer. Deborah Wiles. 2015. Ill. Jerome Lagarrigue. Atheneum, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Originally published in 2001, this picture book was republished on the 50th anniversary of the social action of the freedom workers of 1964 following the passage of Civil Rights legislation, a discussion Wiles includes in her extended introduction. In beautiful, soft-edged illustrations rendered in acrylic on paper, Wiles presents the story of a friendship between two boys, narrated by one of the boys, who meet as a result of the work that John Henry’s mother does every day for the family on the other side of town. The boys help her do the gardening and cleaning but then go to play and swim. “John Henry swims better than anybody I know. He crawls like a catfish, blows bubbles like a swamp monster.” He can’t swim in the town pool, so they dam the creek. John Henry can’t go in the store, but his friend does and shares ice cream with him. The boys learn of a new law, which opens the town swimming pool to everyone under the sun, no matter what color, but when they arrive at the pool in anticipation of the opening, they find workers filling it with asphalt. John Henry finally says, “I wanted to swim in this pool. I want to do everything you can do.” The end of the story, when the boys get their ice cream, John Henry shows he can do at least something his friend can do. The warmth of the illustrations dramatizes friendship and the intensity of feelings as history changed that summer.
Ages 12–14
First Flight Around the World: The Adventures of the American Fliers Who Won the Race.
Tim Grove. 2015. Abrams.
This nonfiction account of the circumnavigation of the globe in the spring and summer of 1924 is an adventure story different from the rest in this post. Planned and executed by six airmen of U. S. Army Air Service (forerunner of the U.S. Air Force), three Douglas biplanes called world cruisers were specially designed for the trip. The pontoons were interchangeable with tires because for one part of the journey they fly along the Pacific Rim and then across South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, to Greenland, and then across the United States before landing again in Seattle. Eight fliers start the journey with four cruisers, but when flying over Alaska on the first leg of the trip one plane is lost in the mountains. At the time of their journey, other countries including England, Italy, and Argentina were mounting their own. Grove explains that the American fliers were eager to highlight how air travel had become much more the norm for travel in Europe than it was in the United States after World War I. Included in the exciting account are the different world cultures of the 1920s where the fliers land. The extensive archival photographs and maps and diagrams supporting the text are additional sources for reading. They provide context for the planning and detail on the many problems that arose requiring resourcefulness, persistence, and patience. Toward the end of the journey, one of the planes is lost in the North Atlantic (the flier is rescued), a sad event after the thousands of miles it had made. It was replaced so the six fliers could continue. Grove has included extensive back matter with a complete itinerary, footnotes, sources, an epilogue, glossary, quick facts, and a report of what happened to the other world fliers.
The Great Good Summer. Liz Garton Scanlon. 2015. Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster.
At the outset of summer in the fictional town of Loomer, Texas, Ivy ponders how she is missing a dog, a middle name, and her mother, who has left home without her medication to become part of the Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle, Florida. Set in 2011, the novel begins in the aftermath of a fire in Texas that destroyed hundreds of homes, an event that inspired Ivy’s mother to set out on a search for something. Ivy and her dad do not know why she left or what she is searching for. They have no idea of her whereabouts, because no one knows where the Great Good Bible Church is. Ivy takes solace in her teacher, Mrs. Murray, whose young children she babysits. Circumspect about people’s judgments, Ivy wonders why her mother considers Mrs. Murray kooky when she does so many helpful things for the community and children as coach, teacher, and mother. She delivers the paper every day, writes novels in the summer, and has potted hydrangea. Ivy decides she is “normal as can be,” especially in light of the understanding that “nobody at the Murray house followed a perfect stranger to Florida for the summer, if you know what I mean.” While babysitting, Ivy meets Paul Dobbs, a remote-controlled airplane enthusiast who wants to be an astronaut, and together they make a plan to find Ivy’s mother in Florida. This fast-paced novel includes a journey during which Ivy learns about friendship and standing up for what she believes is right and valuable with humorous insights into the routine and not-so-routine moments of life.
Ages 15+
I’ll Meet You There. Heather Demetrios. 2015. Henry Holt.
Skylar Evans has a scholarship to attend art school in San Francisco in the fall. For her summer job she works as desk clerk and factotum for Marge at the Paradise Motel in Creek View, a town on Highway 99 in the Central Valley of California. Skylar finds many changes can occur even in a short period of the summer months. At the graduation party, Josh, the brother of an ex-boyfriend, whom Skylar has not seen since his deployment as a Marine to Afghanistan, appears. He limps when he moves to hug her, and she sees he has an artificial leg. Whereas Skylar has a future she longs for and can hardly wait for, Josh realizes that returning to the dusty city after losing friends and his leg in a war is as good as it gets for him. When he begins work at the Paradise, he reconnects with Skylar. Her mother has lost her job as a result of an unfortunate mistake and takes to staying in her bathrobe, smoking cigarettes, and watching her television in the trailer in which they live instead of looking for another job. As their money situation becomes more serious, Skylar takes a second job as weekend clerk at the gas station. Her mother takes up with a man whom Skylar does not like but who promises to pay the rent. For Skylar it comes at too high a price. Josh is determined to step in when Skylar has to face her mother and move out of the house. Through the course of the novel, Skylar discovers qualities about Josh that show her who he must have been as a soldier and who he is as a man. In his chapters, readers get a sense of Josh’s perspective of the story Skylar is narrating—his attitude toward himself and his life change through summer although he is haunted by the memory of his friends who were killed in the war. Josh writes of his dead buddy, “Feels wrong that I might not have gotten Skylar if none of this had happened. If I’m gonna live my life I’ve gotta leave you behind.” Josh and Skylar discover love, select the pieces of their past that support their present, and let go of things they cannot change.
Sandip LeeAnne Wilson serves as associate professor of Literacy Education and English at Husson University, Bangor, ME. She serves on the Board of the New England Reading Association and the Notable Books for a Global Society Committee of the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group.
These reviews are submitted by members of the International Literacy Association's Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group and are published weekly on Literacy Daily.