They flew for a summer
They flew for a summer (original title: The Summer Birds , 1962) is a novel by the British writer Penelope Farmer, first published in Germany in 1966 . It is the first book in a series of novels about the sisters Charlotte and Emma Friede (in the original: Makepeace ), known in England as the Aviary Hall trilogy.
action
Twelve year old Charlotte and her ten year old sister Emma Friede live with their grandfather Elia and the housekeeper Miss Gozzling in a Victorian house on the South Downs . Because of the many stuffed birds , pictures of birds and cages with live birds, it is called the aviary hall .
On their way to the village school in the morning , a few weeks before the summer vacation , the siblings met a mysterious boy. The girls are fascinated by his strange behavior and take him into their school class. Here it turns out that adults cannot see the boy if he does not wish to. Because he is bored in the classroom, he lures Charlotte outside, because he can "teach her more than that". Outside, he shows her that he can fly and explains that he can teach her to fly. Over the next few days and weeks, the boy first teaches the sisters peace, then all the other children in her school class to fly. When the primary school teacher, Miss Hallibutt, suspects the children's secret and asks the boy to teach her to fly too, he explains to her: "I can only show children. They are - are too old to do that!" The teacher keeps the secret and invites the boy to spend his days with the children at school. It's finally the summer break, and the kids get together to fly over the village and the South Downs together for the first time. You are spending an idyllic summer.
When one of the students, annoyed by the boy's leadership, challenges him to a fight over the secret of his unknown origins and intentions, the boy wins in the end. As a prize he had asked for the right to stay with the children until the end of the summer. Shortly before the end of the holidays, he asks the children to accompany him to a "very special place" where they could all fly forever. Only Charlotte trusts her instincts and insists on first finding out where he wants to take them all. The boy gives in to their insistence and finally reveals his secret: He is the last specimen of an almost extinct species of bird, which the bird god Phoenix gave this summer as the last opportunity to revive its species. On his island , the children would in birds turn and can not return. Charlotte remembers the fairy tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and convinces the children, who are nevertheless tempted to fly with the boy and live an eternally young life without responsibility , that they shouldn't expect their parents and friends to worry about their disappearance. Only Magdalene Hobbin, who is called Maggot by everyone and who grows up with her loveless uncle without parents , joins the boy. She uses her chance to escape an unhappy life and help the boy. Charlotte and the other children say goodbye, go home, and prepare for the start of the new school year. You have lost the ability to fly.
Awards
The Summer Birds was nominated for the Carnegie Medal in 1963 and was added to the American Library Association 's Notable Books list that same year .
Sequels
- Penelope Farmer: Emma in winter. Illustrated by Laszlo Acs , Chatto & Windus , London 1966 (not translated into German)
- Penelope Farmer: Charlotte Sometimes , Chatto & Windus , London 1969 (transferred to Germany in 2014 as Charlotte through all times )
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Penelope Farmer: You flew for a summer. From d. Engl. V. Gustav Keim . Illustrations v. Lilo Rasch-Nägele , Boje , Stuttgart 1966.
- ^ Penelope Farmer: The Summer Birds , Chatto & Windus , London 1962.
- ↑ See Alan Hedblad: "Farmer, Penelope (Jane) 1939-". In: Something about the Author: Facts and Pictures about Authors and Illustrators of Books for Young People. Volume 105, Gale Cengage Learning, Farmington Hills, Michigan 1998, p. 64, ISBN 9780787619824