The Summer Birds by Penelope Farmer

First published: 1962; illustrated

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Coming-of-age, emotions, friendship, nature, and social issues

Time of work: The late 1950’s to the early 1960’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: A rural English village not far from the seaside

Principal Characters:

• Charlotte Makepeace, a reserved, thoughtful twelve-year-old, who lives with her grandfather
• Emma Makepeace, her ebullient ten-year-old sister
• The Boy, the birdlike stranger who teaches the children to fly
• Maggot Hobbin, the girls’ shy friend, who establishes a special rapport with the boy
• John “Ginger” Apple, ,
• Thomas “Totty” Feather, ,
• Annie Feather, ,
• Marlene “Marly” Scragg, ,
• Molly Scobb, ,
• Robert “Baby” Fumpkins, ,
• William “Bandy” Scragg, ,
• George “Scooter” Dimple, and
• James “Jammy” Hat, the girls’ schoolmates

The Story

When twelve-year-old Charlotte Makepeace and her ten-year-old sister Emma first encounter the mysterious birdlike boy on their way to school, little do they anticipate the summer of adventure that awaits them. Charlotte will face the dilemma of choosing between the exciting world of carefree flight and romance as represented by the boy and the workaday world of responsibility to her family.

The boy accompanies the girls to school, but later in the day when he and Charlotte escape, he reveals the secret that he can fly. One by one over the ensuing days, the charismatic boy teaches all the children to fly. The children meet on the Downs to revel in their newfound freedom to soar and skim over tree and lake.

As the summer wears on, a power struggle between the boy and the former class leader, Totty Feather, intensifies. Totty questions the boy’s authority to make decisions for the group and probes into the boy’s mysterious background. The tension leads to a fight between the two boys. Charlotte proposes a tournament to settle the dispute. The children will support either the boy or Totty Feather in a game of “French and English,” a flag capture game. If Totty wins, the boy agrees to reveal his mysterious background and leave the group. If the boy wins, he claims the right to stay through the summer as part of the group.

Before the tournament, Charlotte, Emma, Maggot Hobbin, and the boy share an idyllic interlude of increasing friendship climaxed by an exciting adventure at the seaside. The boy convinces Charlotte to come with him to imitate the seagulls’ freefall plunge from the high cliffs. Charlotte must jettison the safety of her life, reach out to trust in the boy and in herself, and make a plunge toward the sea that could result in her death. Terrified and yet not wanting to disappoint the boy, Charlotte leaps from the cliff in a breathless, ecstatic fall that nearly ends in catastrophe. Only the boy’s admonition to “Stop!” keeps her from plunging to her death. She swoops over the waves in a giddy arc, aware that she has just experienced life to its fullest, an experience she will never again capture.

The group of classmates reassembles at the end of the summer for the long-anticipated tournament. In an exciting struggle, the boy’s side finally wins, and the children’s final days of summer extend into glorious days of flight and exploration. Two days before school resumes comes the crucial revelation of the boy’s intent in being with them that summer. The boy invites all the children to fly away with him to a special place. He reveals that he is a bird, the last of his species. The Phoenix, the mighty birdlord, has granted the boy the summer to entice the children back with him to his island, where they will be transformed into birds and help the boy to perpetuate his species.

Charlotte, in agony over her need to choose between the boy and his promise of perpetual flight and the human world of duty to family and friends, chooses to stay. She convinces the others that a carefree world in which they will not have to worry about the human pains of growing up also brings with it the heartache of giving up parents and home and the guilt over causing their families pain. Only Maggot, who has always lived an isolated life with her gamekeeper uncle in the woods, consents to go with the boy to perpetuate the species. Before the boy and Maggot fly away, he explains privately to Charlotte that she was his first choice. Charlotte turns toward the upcoming days and years with a sense that she has made the correct choice, but that it is nevertheless a sad one.

Context

The Summer Birds was British author Penelope Farmer’s first full-length work, adapted from a short story that was intended for her first book, The China People (1960). The novel, one of three about the Makepeace children, was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal in 1963. The second novel, Emma in Winter (1966), features a flight through time by Emma Makepeace and one of the other schoolchildren. Charlotte Sometimes (1969) is a timeshift fantasy involving Charlotte and the girl Clare, who lives during World War I.

The evocation of flight is one of the most striking achievements of The Summer Birds, as it is in Emma in Winter and a later Farmer work, a retelling of the Greek myth of flight, Daedalus and Icarus (1971). Indeed, the novels have often been compared to Sir James Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904), which revolves around the fantasy of flight, but critics are also quick to notice that Farmer is particularly adept at portraying the difficulty that humans might have in mastering its complexities. Although all the children in The Summer Birds learn to fly, some are more skillful than others, and each child has his or her own idiosyncrasies of flight. Arms become tired, landings are not always smooth, and intense concentration is required.

The Summer Birds echoes Peter Pan’s concern over taking one’s place in the adult world. Peter Pan desires to remain a child forever in Neverland. Although the issue is not quite identical in The Summer Birds (after all, becoming a bird on a remote island probably does not ensure immortality), the question of growing up is still central. Charlotte recognizes the pain involved in giving up her fantasy life with the boy and her ability to fly, but she chooses the human world with all its foibles nevertheless. The Summer Birds also resembles Robert Browning’s retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842) in its story of the boy luring the children away from their village and families. Farmer frequently forces her characters to choose whether to stay in the fantasy world; in most cases, the characters choose the real world.

Penelope Farmer has written works complex in both theme and style. Generally recognized as possessing a unique and hauntingly beautiful style that creates intensely tangible settings, Farmer allows thoughtful readers to penetrate introspective worlds that are often hypnotic and hauntingly memorable.