Lucy's Summer

Based upon stories told to the author by his mother about her childhood growing up on a farm in New Hampshire, this lovely work of picture-book historical fiction follows the eponymous Lucy through one summer season, in the year 1910. Lucy's mother sets up a millinery shop in their front room,

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creating new hats for the local women, and refurbishing their old ones. Life on the farm goes on, in the meantime, and Lucy, her younger sister Caroline, and their mother work together to put away the canned food the family will need for the coming winter. Interspersed between the hard work is plenty of fun, whether that be the two sisters' games of make believe, or attending the local Fourth of July parade. There's even an exciting trip to Boston for Lucy, before the summer ends, and our young heroine escorts her younger sister to her first day at the local schoolhouse...

Gentle and non-sensational, and yet somehow completely engrossing at the same time, Lucy's Summer manages to capture the flavor and feeling of one girl's summer, more than one hundred years ago. The many details, captured both in author Donald Hall's narrative and in illustrator Michael McCurdy's artwork, make this tale feel authentic and true, almost like a snapshot of the past. The illustrations, created using a colored scratchboard technique, somewhat reminiscent of 19th-century engraving work I have seen, have an old-fashioned charm that is well-suited to the story. Highly recommended, both to those looking for children's stories set in historical New England/New Hampshire in particular, and to those interested in picture-book historical fiction in general. I myself finished the book wishing that there were more of it - perhaps Hall should write a more extensive, novel-length work about his mother's childhood? I would definitely read it!

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