Summer of the Swans (and Early 70's TV)

I don't know why I never heard of this book as a child - I grew up in the 70's, and this won the Newbery Award in 1971. I think it would have been very good for me to read this story then. One of the only children with a mental disability that I ever encountered in grade school was a kid with Down Syndrome, who swam in a lake near my hometown that I frequented every summer. Sadly, my friends and I avoided Eric as much as possible. Would reading this kind of book have made a difference? It couldn't have hurt.

I didn't start out liking Summer much. Sara, the 14 year old narrator, got on my nerves with her constant complaints about the summer, bickering with her older sister, and getting annoyed with 10 year old brother Charlie, who is non-verbal and likes routines, his wrist watch, and the swans that visit the town's lake.

But the story really grew on me. Sara reminded me a lot of Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time (are 13 or 14 year old girls anywhere at any time ever happy with their appearance, their friends, and their families? I know I wasn't). I thought the description from Charlie's point of view was well-done and not at all condescending, which is what I expected after reading the cover blurb.

I couldn't help mentally comparing The Summer of the Swans to Rules, by Cynthia Lord (one of this year's Newbery Honors books, which is about a big sister with an younger brother who is autistic, an amazing book), and expecting Summer to fall far short. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't.

The TV references made me feel old, though. I don't think kids (or most adults under 40) reading The Summer of the Swans are going to feel the same stab of recognition that I did when Byars mentions the theme song from Green Acres, or the afternoon line-up of the The Newlyweds and The Dating Game. Or "that coyote in 'Road Runner' who is always getting flattened and dynamited and crushed and in the next scene is strolling along, completely normal again" (p. 95). Unless they've seen a lot of Nick at Nite or TVLand or something like that.

Unfortunately, this passage could have been written about the playground at my son's school:

"Well, do you know what that nice little Gretchen Wyant did? I was standing in the bushes by the spigot, turning off the hose, and this nice little Gretchen Wyant didn't see me - all she saw was Charlie at the fence - and she said, 'How's the retard today?' only she made it sound even uglier, 'How's the reeeeetard,' like that. Nothing ever made me so mad. The best sight of my whole life was nice little Gretchen Wyant standing there in her wet Taiwan silk dress with her mouth hanging open." (p. 69)

Well, there isn't a hose and you won't see any girls wearing silk dresses on the playground here. But it's pretty sad that reeeeetard is still one of the most popular insults I hear among 3rd and 4th graders (and worse, more common among many adults) almost forty years after The Summer of the Swans.

Summer of the Swans

Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars won the Newbery Medal in 1971. I was able tell by some of the language and clothing that it was set in the 70s. There are also some drawings on the inside that dated it a little. However, I believe that this is a timeless story. We see a 14 year-old girl, Sara, caught up in the "misery" of her own life. Her feet are too big, her arms to thin, and her nose is too crooked. All of these things are brought into perspective when her 10 year-old mentally handicapped brother, Charlie, goes missing. This is the story of the day her worldview changed.

Swans is a quick and easy read. It probably took me a little over 2 hours. Faster readers could do it quicker! This story had exactly what I felt was missing when I read "Jacob Have I Loved". Both main characters really looked at the negative things in life, and both are named Sara! Sarah in Jacob Have I Loved found a way out of her circumstances but never really saw how negative she had been. It was all justifiable to her but it never was to me as a reader! Sara in Summer of the Swans really comes around and sees what is truly important in life.

None of the characters in the book are flat. Byars does an excellent job of telling the back story of Charlie, the mentally handicapped brother. I also really liked Aunt Willie, who has been taking care of them since their mother died. Her older sister Wanda is in the story for a shorter time, but I think that is what allows Sara to really respond to her brother's disappearance.

I realize I have not yet mentioned the swans! The title of the book comes from the excitement that is caused when 5 swans show up in a lake in Sara's small town.

In the final pages of the book we hear about this mental picture that she has of each of her family members on a set of stairs representing their different stages of life. I think that this represents a moment of growth for Sara and that it was a great conclusion to the story.

I couldn't help but think that this story would be very different if it was written today. Unfortunately, I don't think children would be nearly as excited to go see swans for entertainment. I also realized how corrupt my own mind was when I thought to myself that if Charlie had gone missing today that there are far more dangers that he could have encountered. But this was a simpler time, and I think that is one of the main reasons I enjoyed it so much.

Two thumps up!

A Foreboding Roll of Thunder

I started reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry almost a year ago. I'd heard it was a powerful book, and an important one, but it wasn't one of the Newbery winners that I really wanted to read. It was one that I felt like I should read.

After reading the first five chapters, I was filled with foreboding, waiting for a major character to be horribly killed or wounded. It didn't help that I had read Sounder not too long before I started Roll of Thunder.

I had the same feeling when I started reading The Kite Runner a few years ago, which I also put off reading for a couple years despite the fact that it seemed like half the people I know had already read it and recommended it. What can I say? One reason I read is for relaxation and escape, and I don't generally like Oprah-esque literary fiction. I did end up being very happy that I read The Kite Runner, mind you.

Then I got a part-time writing job, and happily abandoned Roll of Thunder (and indeed, all the remaining winners I hadn't yet read), and filled my drastically reduced reading time with books that didn't engender feelings of impending doom.

I finished my job last month, and finally returned to Roll of Thunder again. I was still worried about the characters - and reading They Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (one of the books in the running for this year's Newbery prize) just before resuming Roll of Thunder didn't exactly make me feel any better about Cassie, Stacey, Christopher-John, Little Man, and their extended family's prospects in Mississippi in the 1930's. It was pretty depressing. So I did something that I know drives some people crazy - I skipped ahead and read the last couple of pages. I wanted to be prepared for the worst that Mildred D. Taylor could throw at me.

Well, I could tell from the last few pages that Taylor's worst wasn't unbearable, and so I was able to finish the book with less foreboding, not wincing quite so much at the (sometimes heavy) foreshadowing, or every time Cassie lost her temper. I have to say that Taylor did an excellent job of describing the Logan siblings, and she used history - as in Mr. Morrison's Reconstruction-era story that he told on Christmas, which could have come straight out of They Called Themselves the KKK - very skillfully. The history doesn't ever overpower the Logans' story, but it serves as powerful backdrop, enriching the plot and putting the the characters' actions into a carefully constructed and entirely believable context.

It's a timeless book, too - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was written in 1976, but you really couldn't tell, unlike some of the other Newbery winners that feel a bit dated now (like Summer of the Swans, for instance, or It's Like This, Cat). I wonder if this accounts for some of the appeal that historical fiction seems to hold the Newbery Committee. At any rate, Roll of Thunder reads like a classic. And yes, parts of it were disturbing, but it was not a horribly depressing book. I actually want to read some of Mildred Taylor's other books about the Logan family now!

Dicey's Song

Dicey's Song is a beautiful coming of age story of a 13 year old girl from a poverty-stricken background, who (along with her three younger siblings) has just come to live with her irascible grandmother in a dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of a small town on the Chesapeake Bay.

There isn't much action in the story, and there is a lot of self-reflection - so some teenagers (especially some boys) may not be very interested in it. The cover doesn't help much in this respect. I kept picking the book up and then moving on to a different book, because it just looked.....gloomy. Like a stereotypical "Newbery winner", I guess (though there really isn't any such thing), and I thought it would be full of angst, depressing events, and beautiful language

It wasn't until I had just a handful of Newbery winners left to read that I reluctantly picked Dicey's book up again.

Well, there is angst, and there is undeniably some tragedy (and beautiful language, too) in Dicey's Song, but it was really stupid of me to put off reading it, because it is also wonderful, and I loved it. The characters seem so real - so complex and interesting - that I can't wait to read more about all of them, starting with Homecoming, the book that precedes Dicey's Song in the "Tillerman cyle". The sibling relationships are fascinating, and Gram (aka Ab Tillerman) is one of my favorite characters in a kid's book since Richard Peck's Grandma Dowdel (in A Year Down Yonder). Ab isn't just eccentric and fierce, though - she has secrets, and we learn about some of the choices she made that have influenced the whole family in Dicey's Song.


Quite a few thought-provoking issues are explored in Dicey's story, which does put it squarely in "stereotypical Newbery"-winning territory. The meaning of family, sibling relationships, school and dealing with teachers, learning disabilities and differences (particularly in the ways different kids learn and different kinds of talent and intelligence), being an outsider, and finally, dealing with loss  - all are important parts of Dicey's Song. Unlike some of the other Newbery winners, though (like Summer of the Swans, which covers some of the same terrain), Dicey's Song is rather timeless, and isn't really linked to any specific happenings in the late1970's- early 80's. You can figure out when the story's set by thinking about the technology (pre-Internet but post-Vietnam, and plane travel isn't extraordinarily rare), but it could almost as easily have taken place in the 1930's or the 50's. The emotional stresses of worrying about a brother who gets into fights, wanting some time away from the rest of the family, dealing with financial problems and prickly characters and aging - into adulthood and "the golden years" - are all pretty interesting as Voigt describes them, anyway - and still relevant in 2011.

Did my mom ruin it for me, or was it really that tedious...

I’ve always been a voracious reader, and a competitive/compulsive list-checker, so when Alicia invited me to participate in this project, I thought I’d recognize a majority of the titles. After scanning the list, however, I’m humbled. I have read only 16 of the titles, and absolutely none of the early winners.

Before getting too specific on any one book, I just wanted to share a few quick and disjointed thoughts.

First, my favorites on the list: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Westing Game, Bridge to Terabithia, Summer of the Swans and The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

Second, the books I didn’t like at the time, but would be interested in re-reading to see if I appreciate them more now: Julie of the Wolves, Island of the Dolphins, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry.

And finally, a quick memory... I remember reading “Island of the Blue Dolphins” in second grade as part of an advanced reading group. There were a handful of us who met weekly while the other students were plowing through textbooks like “Serendipity” and “Kalidescope.” While we were glad to be freed from those tedious books and generally preferred our selections better (specifically I remember “The Lemming Condition”), I can only think of “Blue Dolphins” as a major struggle.

I’ve never been a fan of wilderness books (outside of Little House on the Prairie and the Boxcar Children), so this book just dragged for me. Compounding things, my mom was the reading teacher that led this book group, and every night she’d ask if I’d read the required pages. I always had two or three other books that I was reading for pleasure, and she’d make me put them down to push through the pages for our reading group. It felt like punishment, and I’d wager it’s the first book I remember resenting.

On second thought, maybe I won’t bother re-reading that one. I’ve already spent too many hours on books that didn’t do it for me…

Summer of the Swans

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

Sara is not enjoying her summer. She feels like she is on the other end of a teeter-totter, with a companion determined to jerk her here and there. Her family is difficult and she can’t seem to get along with them, especially her troubled brother, Charlie. It is only when Charlie gets lost while searching for the beautiful swans on the lake that Sara learns what is really important and how to deal with problems.

The conversations in this book felt tied to their time period and, at first, I didn’t think I was going to like the book. But the search for Charlie completely changed my feelings about the book. The author could have easily turned the book into a movie-of-the-week, but she stayed away from that. Instead, she used the situation to help all her characters grow.

It's Like This, Cat

It's Like This, Cat is a the perfect title for this book. Because I think that what it does best is describe a time and a place - neighborhoods in New York City in the early 1960's. A lot of the Newbery winners do excel in capturing particular settings, come to think about it. Maybe I've come to expect that as a given, and that's why I didn't like this book more than I did, which was moderately.

It's interesting, too, because Neville gets the feel of it down (I think pretty well, though I don't know the setting myself) without mentioning current political events or too much of the pop culture of the time. It reminded me of Betsy Byars' Summer of the Swans in that way - except instead of a girl and her tennis shoes and backyards and Green Acres, Neville shows us a boy with his duck tail (which gets turned into a "butch" cut) and apartment buildings with stoops and cellars full of storage lockers, and record players with needles and Belafonte records. Young teenagers ride their bikes everywhere and explore the city by themselves, calling their parents (even if their parents are beatniks) at dinnertime if they're going to be late.

Apart from the setting, the story is a quiet coming-of-age story of a young teenaged boy (unnamed for a few chapters, but you finally learn he's called Dave) who befriends a number of different characters in his neighborhood. One of the more eccentric ones, whom the local kids call Crazy Kate the Cat Woman, gives Dave a young tomcat. Dave is a rather lonely kid - he has no siblings, and he fights with father - and his adventures with Cat lead him to some new perspectives on his family and new friends.

It was all very nice, and I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't really make the profound impression on me that I feel like a Newbery winner should make. Am I expecting too much? Do I really need more "issues" in a story? Is it weird that my main thought after finishing It's Like This, Cat is on the lack of drug use in the big city?

I did find the whole book, including illustrations, online at the University of Pennsylvania's digital library. Take a look at it and see what you think.

Introducing myself

My name is Bekah and I'm a homeschooling mom to 5 kiddos, apprentice midwife, occasional doula, and avid reader of juvenile fiction. In my personal opinion, juvenile fiction is often more well-written than adult fiction, and I also am on the cautious side of what to expose my children too, so I pre-read a lot of material for them. My oldest son is nine, followed by our only daughter who is seven, then the three littles ages four, two and one in a few days.

After looking at the Newberry list, I'm surprised to see that I've read more of the listed books than I thought. I read many a long time ago, when I was a young adult myself and will enjoy rereading with a different perspective.

1986: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (Harper)
1983: Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt (Atheneum)
1981: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (Crowell)
1978: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Crowell)
1972: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien (Atheneum)
1971: Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (Viking)
1968: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (Atheneum)
1963: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Farrar)
1961: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (Houghton)
1959: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Houghton)
1950: The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (Doubleday)
1936: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink (Macmillan)
1934: Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women by Cornelia Meigs (Little, Brown)
1930: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field (Macmillan)
1923: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting (Stokes)