Summer time by Antonia Pesenti & Hilary Bell

A different style of book, with unusual illustrations and a story that isn’t really a story will greet those who pick up this book. It is imaginative and provocative, gathering readers to its core as they see how one family spends its summer holidays.

Waiting for the mandatory half an hour after lunch to allow their stomachs to settle, a girl and boy and their dog peer out over the blue sea.  Poetically, each page evokes summertime as the two children involve themselves in the adventures offered. They avoid the magpie as it swoops, it is the end of spring, and she is protecting her nest. The rotary fan plays a cooling place in the heat of summer, and the children have measured the time it takes for the fan to rotate, drying their damp hair. At the pool, the day is so hot that your skin dries the instant you lie on the concert edge. After swimming, taking a shower means remembering again that the water will never get hot. It takes a week to eat a whole tray of mangoes, and a month is spent at the pool as your hair turns green with the chlorine. The season pass is used well. The Neapolitan ice cream is in the fridge, the chocolate and vanilla eaten, but the strawberry stays for yonks.

The whole is a wonderful look at summer, evoking memories of all the times children spend at the beach, each set of four lines offering another look at the time things take. From a few minutes to an hour, then an afternoon, and later in the book the bigger pieces of time are offered: ages, seasons, yonks, year, forever then eternity. Each wonderful illustration reflects the few words on the page, giving readers a focus for their thoughts. The page for ‘week’ for example, tells us of the days spent at a holiday home, illustrated for us in all its dingy peppermint green, above ground, spare garden with a kangaroo nibbling the grass, overhead wire, aluminium windows. The illustration will evoke many memories for the readers.

This book is a loving homage to the customs and rituals of an Australian summer at the beach, viewed by Pesenti and Bell. Pesenti’s architect’s eye can be seen on a number of pages. There is something for everyone here, not only a wonderful evocation of summer in Australia, but I can imagine readers focusing on one or two pages, taking the image and words as a reflection of their summer.

Looking back is suggested by the old fibre holiday house, the Neapolitan ice-cream and then the purchase of school shoes along with the metal foot measure.

Further information about Pesenti, can be found here. 

I enjoyed recollecting the Australian summer through the images and text. The images showcase so many aspects of children at the beach, and the spare words reflect the emphasis on time during a long hot summer. And I love the last few pages, child getting his school shoes, bringing the summer to a close, and looking into the night sky is the dark emu, there for eternity. A wonderful culmination to this book about time.

Themes: Time, Summer, Australian beach, Humour.

Fran Knight