Summer of the Swans
By Betsy Byars
I was in the fourth grade when I read “Summer of the Swans.” The fourth grade was a time of great change for me. My fourth grade class was filled with half fourth graders and half fifth graders. The students selected to be in the class were chosen by high scores on a standardized test. When my name was called as being in the class, I remember my classmates’ comments that indicated that I wasn’t the brightest bulb and maybe a mistake had been made.
Sometime during the fourth grade, we were all called to the office for an eye test. The test was administered by our principal, George Crout. At some point during the course of the exam, Mr. Crout exclaimed, “My goodness, you’re blind.”
I became a not very bright, glasses wearing fourth grader. I’m sure I felt as much of an outcast as Sara Godfrey, the main character of “Summer of the Swans.”
Sara begins the book with the huge problem of having made a fashion faux pas with the selection of her bright orange tennis shoes. She feels sure the orange shoes make her big feet closely resemble Donald Duck.
But it wasn’t her shoes that left an impression on me. It was her brother, Charlie. You see, Charlie is mentally retarded. There in the pages of a book, I met someone like me. My sister, Lori, is also mentally retarded. So Sara Godfrey and I had more in common than the awkwardness of youth. We had siblings that we loved and siblings that set us apart.
With his nervous tick of shuffling his feet on the front steps of the porch, Charlie wears a groove in the wood. My sister, Lori, has a favorite chair that has now molded to her shape. Charlie is fascinated by his wristwatch. He can’t tell time, but the tick, tock sound of the clock calms him when he is agitated. Lori loves to listen to Alan Jackson when she’s riding in the car. Charlie is a restless sleeper, and Lori laughs in her sleep. It’s in all the small details that Byars paints a realistic and believable picture of Charlie.
In the course of the book, Charlie finds trouble and Sara must rely on help from others. She has to re-evaluate her perception of one boy whom she’d wrongly classified as a fink. Later in my life, I would punch a girl (with newly installed braces) in the mouth for saying unkind things about Lori. Heck has no fury like the loyalty of sisterhood.
As the book progresses, Sara found a friend and a solution for her orange shoes. By reading “Summer of the Swans,” I found a friend as well. I began a friendship with books that lasts even through today.
