Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
There's one significant subset of summer lit no one's nominated: children's books set in the summertime. I like school books too (and obviously many kids' books fall into one or the other category), but there's something about summer and children. I love the way the books can evoke that sense you had as a child of the endlessness of it and how it was completely divorced from your other life in school.
I'd love to hear people name a few old favorites in this category (we can save the school ones for September!). Some that occur to me are Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books and the magic books of E. Nesbit and Edward Eager (who was greatly influenced by Nesbit). I particularly wanted to mention the last, as Eager wrote about bookish kids and I'm charmed by a particular reference which is a nexus between our current read and the current nominations. From Magic by the Lake:
I hope everyone is enjoying an unexcavated version of The Three Musketeers!
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For me it evokes the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton. I used to sit enraptured as our teacher read these to us in our down time, which probably fuelled my love of reading. They weren't all based in the summer, but that's the enduring memory I have of these wonderful stories.