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CITY IN THE SUMMER by Eleanor Schick

CITY IN THE SUMMER

By

Pub Date: April 28th, 1969
Publisher: Macmillan

Men drilling and men hammering. . . old people and young people, together and apart. . . children playing and children fighting, and children doing nothing at all. . . and there is no place to get away. . . but the roof, with the water tanks and the chimneys and the laundry, and the old man's flock of pigeons""--that's the city in the summer until Jerry tells the old man his dream ""of a place that was different"" and they go by subway to the beach. The day that is different is seen as closely and unsentimentally as the city street: early, absorbing emptiness gives way to noisy crowds but there are still cool winds and wet sands; then a sudden storm that scatters the people and at the last, sunset, deepening dusk, the soft, still way homeward. There's an undercurrent here that was largely lacking in Miss Schick's earlier situation-oriented books; the individual illustrations, too, are warmer and more alive. Up the lambent last page: the single word ""home"" (at the end of a runover sentence), the boy embracing his mother.