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A review by museoffire
The Summerfolk by Doris Burn
5.0
I am a born and bred Long Islander and grew up frequently hearing the saying "summer people some are not!" along with several other far less flattering platitudes directed at the seemingly endless stream of obnoxious, entitled out of towners who descended (and continue to descend) every summer on my sleepy little seaside home.
We called them "citidiots" when I hit high school.
But not all of them were the Kardashian wannabe, giant sunglass wearing, ice skinny half caff latte drinking, "oh my goddddd do you even KNOW who I ammm" shouting, botox shooting nightmares you see on TV (or that I see at the library ahem).
My first boyfriend was a summer kid. We saw the movie "Regarding Henry" and he said I was the girl he was gonna marry. We took sailing lessons together. When I was ten one my best friends was a summer girl from New York. We played together all the time, pretended we were witches in her back yard, swam for hours at the beach.
So I know they're not all bad.
Willy Potts, the hero of this gorgeous, totally timeless story, learns that lesson too. He and his father, a cantankerous fisherman, spend their days sitting outside their shack on a sand dune, mending their nets, and watching the summer folk drop peanut butter sandwiches in the sand.
"Thick as sand fleas and twice as pesky" they lament to each other.
Then one afternoon while Willy is lying in his leaky boat a summer folk comes to him! Fedderly is the strangest summer folk Willy has ever seen. He's dressed like the Artful Dodger by way of a Lost Boy and he wants to know if Willy would care to join his flotilla! Willy having little idea what a flotilla is but with nothing else to do decides to go along. Soon he finds himself meeting all sorts of summer folk on a magical afternoon that leaves his world just a little bit bigger and his heart just a touch softer.
This book is one of my all time favorite children's books. Its illustrations are utterly gorgeous. Done in black and white pencil they're astoundingly detailed and so lovely they make me want to cry. As Willy is introduced to each of Fedderly's fellow summer folk its like he's meeting characters out of a fairie tale who open his mind to a world beyond fishing and his father's gruff view of anyone different from them. There's an air of mystery and dreaminess to everything. These are pictures to get lost in.
Honestly I think its criminal that Doris Burn only wrote and illustrated three books (though she did illustrate quite a few others) because this story, which is written in a delightful almost poetry, so perfectly captures a child's view of the world, that sort of halfway point between what's real and what's dreamed up out of the imagination. If her books were all I had to read my kids I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This is a little difficult to come by but its a must for any fan of really good children's picture books. My eldest still loves to hear this one at bedtime and we're thrilled every time he asks for it.
We called them "citidiots" when I hit high school.
But not all of them were the Kardashian wannabe, giant sunglass wearing, ice skinny half caff latte drinking, "oh my goddddd do you even KNOW who I ammm" shouting, botox shooting nightmares you see on TV (or that I see at the library ahem).
My first boyfriend was a summer kid. We saw the movie "Regarding Henry" and he said I was the girl he was gonna marry. We took sailing lessons together. When I was ten one my best friends was a summer girl from New York. We played together all the time, pretended we were witches in her back yard, swam for hours at the beach.
So I know they're not all bad.
Willy Potts, the hero of this gorgeous, totally timeless story, learns that lesson too. He and his father, a cantankerous fisherman, spend their days sitting outside their shack on a sand dune, mending their nets, and watching the summer folk drop peanut butter sandwiches in the sand.
"Thick as sand fleas and twice as pesky" they lament to each other.
Then one afternoon while Willy is lying in his leaky boat a summer folk comes to him! Fedderly is the strangest summer folk Willy has ever seen. He's dressed like the Artful Dodger by way of a Lost Boy and he wants to know if Willy would care to join his flotilla! Willy having little idea what a flotilla is but with nothing else to do decides to go along. Soon he finds himself meeting all sorts of summer folk on a magical afternoon that leaves his world just a little bit bigger and his heart just a touch softer.
This book is one of my all time favorite children's books. Its illustrations are utterly gorgeous. Done in black and white pencil they're astoundingly detailed and so lovely they make me want to cry. As Willy is introduced to each of Fedderly's fellow summer folk its like he's meeting characters out of a fairie tale who open his mind to a world beyond fishing and his father's gruff view of anyone different from them. There's an air of mystery and dreaminess to everything. These are pictures to get lost in.
Honestly I think its criminal that Doris Burn only wrote and illustrated three books (though she did illustrate quite a few others) because this story, which is written in a delightful almost poetry, so perfectly captures a child's view of the world, that sort of halfway point between what's real and what's dreamed up out of the imagination. If her books were all I had to read my kids I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This is a little difficult to come by but its a must for any fan of really good children's picture books. My eldest still loves to hear this one at bedtime and we're thrilled every time he asks for it.