Award: NewberryMy TakePuberty is hitting Sara hard and Byars is absolutely brilliant in her depiction of the angst and drama of a young teen with the frustrations about her father and her impatience with her little brother---this rings so true of sibling relationships! Her intense sense of right and wrong as well as her desire to protect along with that so-very-thin skin.It's the mid-1960s and, in just a few pages, Byars gives us a quick peek into a few days of the Godfrey family's life with the focus primarily on Sara and then Charlie providing us with a lifetime of information and still leaving us wanting to know more.I want to know why Aunt Willie is helping the family like this? What is her past? Why does their dad work out of town? What was the illness? What will happen with Charlie? How does their dad feel about them all? What is his perspective? How does Sara fare at the party?The StoryThis summer is just awful. Nothing is going right. Sara knows it's the same as last summer...it's just...something is different this year.The kicker in this story is when Aunt Willy forces Sara to take her brother along to see the swans for it causes an awakening in Charlie in the night. A need to see the swans again. And Charlie disappears.That next morning is frantic as the family panics with Sara rushing out to search. A search aided by her enemy where she learns the truth.The CharactersSara Godfrey is 14 in this summer and she's bored, angry, and obsessed with how horrible she looks...especially her h-u-g-e feet. Mary Weicek is her best friend...she has must be, as endlessly patient as they are with each other's quirks!Wanda is her older sister. Charlie is their 10-year-old mentally challenged brother, damaged by a traumatic illness when he was very young. Aunt Willy lives with the three children while their father Samuel works out-of-town during the week.Frank is Wanda's boyfriend and arrives to take Wanda down to the lake to see the swans. On his motor scooter!! Joe Melby is a boy in her class. A boy whom Sara despises for what he has done.The CoverThe cover seems to be a cream net on top of a cream background with a 1960ish, soft Peter Max quality to the ethereal purple and blue swan skimming across the cover around and through the sketched and patchy watercolor of Charlie and Sara who appear to be sitting in mid-air. The green wake as it splits at the swan's breast is repeated in Charlie's trousers with the purples and blue repeated in Sara's pants. Charlie's horizontally-striped T-shirt is in creams, a lavender purple and a deep purple-violet. Sara's tennis shoes are the bright orange that had cheered her so.The title reflects The Summer of the Swans that has enthralled Charlie and left Sara so restless.
40 1971: Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (Viking)6/8/13 (142 pages) quick read - read on the way to Chicago for Matthew & Liz's wedding.Sara Godfrey, her older sister, and younger brother have lived with their aunt since their mother died. Their father is still alive, but works in another state and only visits on occasional weekends. Sara is a young teen who is dissatisfied with her life. She feels inferior to her older sister and helps care for her brother who in the jargon of that day is "retarded." Her life is not bad, but just doesn't feel right to her. However, when her brother is lost, she gets a new perspective on life. "Up until this year, it seemed, her life had flowed along with rhythmic evenness. The first fourteen years of her life all seememe. She had loved her sister without envy, her aunt without finding her coarse, her brother without pity. Now all that was changed. She was filled with a discontent, an anger about herself, her life, her family, that made her think she would never be content again." p. 46"His whole life had been built on a strict routine, and as long as this routine was kept up, he felt safe and well. The same foods, the same bed, the same furniture in the same place, the same seat on the shool bus, the same class procedure were all important to him. But always there could be the unexpected, the dreadful surprise that would topple his carefully constructed life in an instant." p. 122"A picture came into her mind of the laughing, curly-headed man with the broken tooth in the photograph album, and she suddenly saw life as a series of huge, uneven steps, and she saw herself on the steps, standing motionless in her prison shirt, and she had just taken an enormous step up out of the shadows, and she was standing, waiting, and there were other steps in front of her, so that she could go as high as the sky, and she saw Charlie on a flight of small difficult steps, and her father down at the bottom of some steps, just sitting and not trying to go further. She saw everyone she knew on those blinding white steps and for a moment everything was clearer than it had ever been." p. 140My personal Newbery scale:Meaningt^Read-aloudt^ note use of the term retarded 22Agest-Lengtht2 hoursMetgoodLots of names, but most don't matter.Sara Godfrey 9Boysie - dog 9Wanda - SisterBull Durham 10Charlie - brother - 13Mary - friend - Aunt Willie 20Sammy - fatherJoe Melby 79
What do You think about The Summer Of The Swans (2005)?
In 24 hours, Sara's life and outlook change dramatically. After taking her special needs brother to see the swans that are visiting her neighborhood lake she laments about her looks and falls asleep listening to her brother, Charlie tapping the wall. In the morning, she discovers Charlie is gone. The search is on to find him and in the process Sara learns some very valuable lessons.I read this because Samantha had to read it for school and I had to sign a permission slip for her to do so. It turns out, the language was not bad, but some could be offensive in today's society. In 1970, there would not have been any issues with the book.
—Anna Mari
Simple story. Typical teenage girl beginning to face uncertainty about herself although her life has been full of challenges. Not a very fast paced book but it's short so it doesn't take long to read. Not the most uplifting book, but offers a small silver lining at the end. I'm surprised it won the Newbery Award since it seemed fairly simple. The swans play a fairly small role despite the book's title. There is no foul language or use of God's name. No sexual references, not even kissing. There is the death of a parent at the beginning, but it is an event that happened in the past to set the stage for the book. There is use of the word "retard" and "retarded" early on, but the author clearly considers it to be name-calling, ugly and inappropriate. Later the phrase "mentally handicapped" is used instead, which would serve as an acceptable description for 1970 when the book was written. The description of the child sounds more like an autism diagnosis today. Even though it is simple and not an in-depth book, it is wonderful to be able to read a children's book that is clean, descriptive and age appropriate unlike many of the new books for this same age today.
—L Frost
Byars, Betsy. The Summer of the Swans. New York: Puffin Books. 1981. Target Audience: Age 8-12 years. Reading Level: 4.9. Awards: Newberry Medal. The ten-year-old developmentally disabled brother of fourteen-year-old Sara Godfrey wanders away from the house and gets lost. Sara, who feels a special connection with this sibling, searches for him until he is found. Presented are themes about sensitivity for the disabled, responsibility to family, false accusations, and adolescent angst. This compelling story reminds me of the children’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling, since by the novel’s end, Sara’s opinion of some of the characters ameliorates – Joe Melby, Sara’s father, even Sara herself. CSULB Class 1 Classic.
—Terry Marzell
