Blurb and opening lines: "Marley and Moses lived in a place where the heat crept up and smothered the days in stiffing stillness. And it stayed and stayed."
On Monday the children try to play outside in their tree using grandma's fan as a way to try to keep cool. On Tuesday they spend time at the creek which has almost no water. On Wednesday they fill watering cans and take turns under the cascading water and so the week continues until the sky grows dark on Friday.
"Marley and Moses lived in a place where the rain, when it came, wasn't cold pin rain you had to run and hide from. It was fat, juicy 'come and play' rain."
Every child and adult runs outside to play and frolic and dance in the rain ... which "when it came, stayed and stayed."
There are many meanings to be inferred from the title – summer blue sky, summer blues/mood, and the dark blue of the sky when the rain is coming.
When you pick up this book flip it over and notice the contrasting front and back covers and then turn to the front and back end papers. They are splendid. Of course, there are other books about heat, summer, drought etc here in Australia which end with glorious rain but I think this book is a worthy addition to the cannon. I am thinking of books such as Mallee sky by Jodi Toering, Two Summers by John Heffernan, and Drought by Jackie French. The point of difference here is audience.
This book is perfect to share with younger children. Summer Blue contains carefully crafty lyrical language and phrases – smothered the days in stifling stillness and heavy with heat and fabulous verbs linked to heat and water such as melted, dissolved, evaporated, oozed and poured.
You can feel the cool water in the illustration where Marley tips the watering can over her head. The sense of place and time are very strong in this book. The motif of the fan works well when finally, it is so hot the pair of children cannot even share this tiny cooling device.
I love the way the story ends with the rain still falling – this will open up some excellent discussions about weather, drought and floods with younger children and climate change with older students. The enormity of the arrival of the rain is mirrored by the way the whole landscape is shown using a birds eye view on the double spread where the sky turns black, grey and indigo. The digital illustrations have a beautiful soft almost nostalgic focus and there is a perfect shift in the colour palette from the hot summer and yellow grasses to the purples, blues and aqua tones of the rain filled pages. There is a wonderful change of mood capturing the joy and renewed energy of the children as they frolic in rain puddles and the mud. The ways the animals react to the weather and environment is also engaging and appealing – and very realistic.
The weather explored in this book is common in Australia - drought and rain - but the landscape depicted by Marjorie Crosby-Fairall is interesting. It does look Australian in some ways but the scenes also have a more universal feel possibly because they are painted with using a soft focus. Reading this book with a group of children it would be important to talk about safety - alerting your group to the potential dangers of playing in flood waters although in this book the water does look very shallow. Venturing into flood waters is a huge concern in country areas where so many little children, and adults too, misread the depth and treachery of heavy rain and floods.
Summer Blue is a 2023 Children's Book Council of Australia CBCA notable title. You can see inside this book here. Take a look at other books illustrated by Marjorie Crosby-Fairall and for Trudie Trewin.
Some years ago I started a collection of books that use the pattern of days of the week and while this is not a major focus of this story it is an interesting story device you could explore with young writers.
Companion books:
