Sunday, July 4, 2010

Summer by Alice Low

Summer by Alice Low, illustrated by Roy McKie

Rating: 5 summery stars

It's been retro week at our house for the past few weeks.  It all started with a trip to my Dad's house a few weeks ago.  He's got a pool, which is cool, but he's also got (drumroll, please) The Children's Library.  This library is a few shelves stuffed with all the old books that my sister and I loved as children.  During a break from swimming and sun, Lorelei said she was ready for some quiet time, so we got a stack of books from The Children's Library and set her up on a pool chair.  Her twin cousins joined in the read-fest and they turned the very pages I turned as a kid.

This was the best of the best in the stack of books.  I read it out loud to Lorelei and her twin cousins while the sun shone down on us, warming our towels that were wrapped around us.  It was towards the end of June, during an unusually hot spell here in Virginia that meant summer really is here, ready or not.  The girls' hair was still wet and in their face as they sipped their chocolate milk, given to them because it was Sunday and they were at GrandDad's house.

Really, is there a more perfect book than this one at that moment? 

All of them loved it, with the references to the sun and the heat and the beach and the waves and the fireflies and the roasted marshmallows and all that good stuff that childhood summertime should be all about.  It was like jumping back a dozen years into my own childhood, one that was full and dirty and fun and perfect.

We loved it so much that we checked it from the library, too, so we read it on the way to GrandDad's house again today, and then read it at his house, and then on the way home. 


Hooray!  Summer is HERE!

No comments:

Post a Comment