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The Summerfolk
When the summerfolk take over the beach, Willy heads for the swamp. But on the longest day of the year he is surprised by a different sort of summerfolk.
38 pages, Library Binding
First published January 1, 1968
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
April 21, 2022
*Happy sigh*
Doris Burn has such a way of capturing children’s dream worlds with her illustrations!! Because now I want a clunky little barge to be my pirate’s ship too!
Willy Potts lives in a shanty by the sea, and every year it’s the same story. Summerfolk. Everywhere. He humphs at them, that is, until one day he runs into Fedderly. Not only does he have an adventuresome day, but his opinion about the Summerfolk changes as well.
Pure fun with the subtle message that everything isn’t always what it seems at first glance.
Ages: 3 - 12
Cleanliness: a girl pretends to tell kids their fortune with old playing cards.
Doris Burn has such a way of capturing children’s dream worlds with her illustrations!! Because now I want a clunky little barge to be my pirate’s ship too!
Willy Potts lives in a shanty by the sea, and every year it’s the same story. Summerfolk. Everywhere. He humphs at them, that is, until one day he runs into Fedderly. Not only does he have an adventuresome day, but his opinion about the Summerfolk changes as well.
Pure fun with the subtle message that everything isn’t always what it seems at first glance.
Ages: 3 - 12
Cleanliness: a girl pretends to tell kids their fortune with old playing cards.
September 4, 2018
I am a born and bred Long Islander and grew up frequently hearing the saying "summer people some are not!" along with several other far less flattering platitudes directed at the seemingly endless stream of obnoxious, entitled out of towners who descended (and continue to descend) every summer on my sleepy little seaside home.
We called them "citidiots" when I hit high school.
But not all of them were the Kardashian wannabe, giant sunglass wearing, ice skinny half caff latte drinking, "oh my goddddd do you even KNOW who I ammm" shouting, botox shooting nightmares you see on TV (or that I see at the library ahem).
My first boyfriend was a summer kid. We saw the movie "Regarding Henry" and he said I was the girl he was gonna marry. We took sailing lessons together. When I was ten one my best friends was a summer girl from New York. We played together all the time, pretended we were witches in her back yard, swam for hours at the beach.
So I know they're not all bad.
Willy Potts, the hero of this gorgeous, totally timeless story, learns that lesson too. He and his father, a cantankerous fisherman, spend their days sitting outside their shack on a sand dune, mending their nets, and watching the summer folk drop peanut butter sandwiches in the sand.
"Thick as sand fleas and twice as pesky" they lament to each other.
Then one afternoon while Willy is lying in his leaky boat a summer folk comes to him! Fedderly is the strangest summer folk Willy has ever seen. He's dressed like the Artful Dodger by way of a Lost Boy and he wants to know if Willy would care to join his flotilla! Willy having little idea what a flotilla is but with nothing else to do decides to go along. Soon he finds himself meeting all sorts of summer folk on a magical afternoon that leaves his world just a little bit bigger and his heart just a touch softer.
This book is one of my all time favorite children's books. Its illustrations are utterly gorgeous. Done in black and white pencil they're astoundingly detailed and so lovely they make me want to cry. As Willy is introduced to each of Fedderly's fellow summer folk its like he's meeting characters out of a fairie tale who open his mind to a world beyond fishing and his father's gruff view of anyone different from them. There's an air of mystery and dreaminess to everything. These are pictures to get lost in.
Honestly I think its criminal that Doris Burn only wrote and illustrated three books (though she did illustrate quite a few others) because this story, which is written in a delightful almost poetry, so perfectly captures a child's view of the world, that sort of halfway point between what's real and what's dreamed up out of the imagination. If her books were all I had to read my kids I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This is a little difficult to come by but its a must for any fan of really good children's picture books. My eldest still loves to hear this one at bedtime and we're thrilled every time he asks for it.
We called them "citidiots" when I hit high school.
But not all of them were the Kardashian wannabe, giant sunglass wearing, ice skinny half caff latte drinking, "oh my goddddd do you even KNOW who I ammm" shouting, botox shooting nightmares you see on TV (or that I see at the library ahem).
My first boyfriend was a summer kid. We saw the movie "Regarding Henry" and he said I was the girl he was gonna marry. We took sailing lessons together. When I was ten one my best friends was a summer girl from New York. We played together all the time, pretended we were witches in her back yard, swam for hours at the beach.
So I know they're not all bad.
Willy Potts, the hero of this gorgeous, totally timeless story, learns that lesson too. He and his father, a cantankerous fisherman, spend their days sitting outside their shack on a sand dune, mending their nets, and watching the summer folk drop peanut butter sandwiches in the sand.
"Thick as sand fleas and twice as pesky" they lament to each other.
Then one afternoon while Willy is lying in his leaky boat a summer folk comes to him! Fedderly is the strangest summer folk Willy has ever seen. He's dressed like the Artful Dodger by way of a Lost Boy and he wants to know if Willy would care to join his flotilla! Willy having little idea what a flotilla is but with nothing else to do decides to go along. Soon he finds himself meeting all sorts of summer folk on a magical afternoon that leaves his world just a little bit bigger and his heart just a touch softer.
This book is one of my all time favorite children's books. Its illustrations are utterly gorgeous. Done in black and white pencil they're astoundingly detailed and so lovely they make me want to cry. As Willy is introduced to each of Fedderly's fellow summer folk its like he's meeting characters out of a fairie tale who open his mind to a world beyond fishing and his father's gruff view of anyone different from them. There's an air of mystery and dreaminess to everything. These are pictures to get lost in.
Honestly I think its criminal that Doris Burn only wrote and illustrated three books (though she did illustrate quite a few others) because this story, which is written in a delightful almost poetry, so perfectly captures a child's view of the world, that sort of halfway point between what's real and what's dreamed up out of the imagination. If her books were all I had to read my kids I'd be perfectly fine with that.
This is a little difficult to come by but its a must for any fan of really good children's picture books. My eldest still loves to hear this one at bedtime and we're thrilled every time he asks for it.
August 10, 2020
I've wanted this book for ages after loving Doris Burn's Andrew Henry's Meadow. Somehow, with this one, I feel like I was missing a bit of the magic that those who really loved this book felt, but I still appreciated it. Read some of the reviews by those for whom this book is deeply meaningful. I will let them sing the praises.
May 22, 2010
This is it. The book that made me.
June 3, 2024
I recently found my copy in a box of childhood things. It was a Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club selection from 1968. A simple picture book filled with wonder and imagination. Just lovely for a summer read.
July 30, 2011
At the April BookCrossing meeting Sean and I were given a stack of children's books. The Summerfolk is one of those books.
The Summerfolk for its delightful illustrations and for its story reminds me a great deal of Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright. According to Wikipedia, the book was inspired by Burn's life on Waldron Island.
In this case a child goes out to adventure on the water after having heard the adults speak disparagingly about the hordes of "summerfolks" who would soon be descending upon their island. While out imagining all sorts of evil things the summerfolk's must be doing to ruin his favorite haunts, he meets up with a group of children. They take him on a wild boat adventure to a tree house he has never seen. It turns out that these kids are summerfolk. The lesson learned is that not all outsiders are bad.
What makes the book so magical are the illustrations, also done by Burn. They are what remind me most of the Enright books. Burn's detailed line drawings are reminiscent of the illustrative style of Beth and Joe Krush, the team that illustrated Enright's books (along with many of Mary Norton's).
The Summerfolk for its delightful illustrations and for its story reminds me a great deal of Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright. According to Wikipedia, the book was inspired by Burn's life on Waldron Island.
In this case a child goes out to adventure on the water after having heard the adults speak disparagingly about the hordes of "summerfolks" who would soon be descending upon their island. While out imagining all sorts of evil things the summerfolk's must be doing to ruin his favorite haunts, he meets up with a group of children. They take him on a wild boat adventure to a tree house he has never seen. It turns out that these kids are summerfolk. The lesson learned is that not all outsiders are bad.
What makes the book so magical are the illustrations, also done by Burn. They are what remind me most of the Enright books. Burn's detailed line drawings are reminiscent of the illustrative style of Beth and Joe Krush, the team that illustrated Enright's books (along with many of Mary Norton's).
August 26, 2017
Excellent in every way. The line-drawings are evocative, playful, and a perfect fit for the text. The story--about a young boy, the son of a fisherman, learning his dislike for summerfolk isn't in every case warranted--uses great vocabulary (e.g., sieve, polliwogs, gunnel, flotilla, yaw, tules, fore-and-aft, brunch and lupper, au revoir), memorable names (Fedderly, Rosebud, Cork and Spinner, Twyla Loo), fun exclamations ("Heave ho, for the bounding main," "So ho, for the briny deep!"), and an explicit reference to "Blow the man down," a great sea shanty if ever there was one.
January 28, 2012
One of my favorite books from childhood! Story is about a rather strange little group of friends in who are permanent residents of a summer tourist town on the water. This group has no interest in the "summerfolk" who pollute their town during the summer, but as I recall they learn to befriend one of them. This book is out-of-print and I no longer have a copy. Need to order one from Amazon!
April 2, 2025
We discovered this through the old Loganberry Books "Stump the Bookseller" website. It was a "what was that book" service in which people often wrote of their emotions and memories about the books they'd read so long ago. So it's as much about the readers as the books they're seeking. This intriguing description is what led us to buy it, so here it is for you.
"The story is dreamy and hazy, and although a children's book, is somewhat creepy, with undertones of alienation and rebellion. A raft is involved, being poled through a watery world along a sinuous channel through reeds and tree roots. I think it starts out in more of an open marshy atmosphere with only one child at the helm, but as he/she moves along through the hazy afternoon, he gradually makes stops and picks up additional children, perhaps even a set of twins, and then enters more of a forested swampy environment and the mood grows darker and more mysterious and ultimately they end up, in the evening, within a forest clearing that contains a rickety circus/carnival, with trapezes swooping from the trees and giant nets descending from the branches. No adults appear in this book, and there is a distinct sense of being in a world of lost children. I believe it is the last day of summer, or midsummer's eve."
The reply mentions "There's a strange/unsettling feel to the book. If it helps, it was also published as a Weekly Reader Book Club book." The original querant says this is definitely it, and she was beginning to think she'd imagined it.
"The story is dreamy and hazy, and although a children's book, is somewhat creepy, with undertones of alienation and rebellion. A raft is involved, being poled through a watery world along a sinuous channel through reeds and tree roots. I think it starts out in more of an open marshy atmosphere with only one child at the helm, but as he/she moves along through the hazy afternoon, he gradually makes stops and picks up additional children, perhaps even a set of twins, and then enters more of a forested swampy environment and the mood grows darker and more mysterious and ultimately they end up, in the evening, within a forest clearing that contains a rickety circus/carnival, with trapezes swooping from the trees and giant nets descending from the branches. No adults appear in this book, and there is a distinct sense of being in a world of lost children. I believe it is the last day of summer, or midsummer's eve."
The reply mentions "There's a strange/unsettling feel to the book. If it helps, it was also published as a Weekly Reader Book Club book." The original querant says this is definitely it, and she was beginning to think she'd imagined it.
April 14, 2023
When summer comes to the seaside town, Willy Potts is unhappy, for with the summer comes the summer folk, who are just as pesky as fleas. They take up the entire beach! So Willy decides to escape to the swamp with his broken boat and discovers a whole group of children, summerfolk, who are also hiding from the touristy part of town. This book was interesting. I first discovered Burn with a wonderful picture book she wrote and illustrated called Andrew Henry's Meadow, which is still one of my absolute favorite picture books. This one isn't quite as enjoyable, but I really loved the sense of misjudging people. The main character does go through a character arch, which is sometimes nonexistent in picture books. And it's about imaginative children, who feel misunderstood, which is a running theme in this and Burn's other book. My rating - 4/5
August 8, 2025
After enjoying We Were Tired of Living in a House: 55th Anniversary Edition I decided to find more by the illustrator, Doris Burn. And on openlibrary.org, I found an archived copy of this gem, a sort of modern fairy tale. Absolutely delightful, and like nothing else I recall ever reading. Young me would have been even more enchanted.
October 16, 2022
I adored "Andrew Henry's Meadow", so when I saw this for 10c at the local thrift shop, I had to have it. The charcoal-dark yet ballpoint fine illustrations of the flotilla and the mysterious summerfolk did not disappoint. Though I would've liked a little more character development from grumpy Willy, I liked the brief ramble from brunch to lupper in the hot, spooky swamp. A bit of ol' Florida for the soul, like cracker Peter Pan. Precious.
March 28, 2020
I loved this book as a child. I reread it today and can't believe that I missed the "other" story. The illustrations are beautiful. Enjoy.
October 22, 2020
So beautiful and fun and one of my favorite picture books to read, though not quite as favorite as We Were Tired of Living in a House, and Andrew Henry's Meadow.
August 17, 2011
This book was read to me lo these many decades ago, and I'd forgotten the title/author; a friend reminded me of it.
Willy and Joe Potts live in a shack on a sand dune; behind their house is a swamp and before it is a lovely sandy beach...which is overrun with "summerfolk" every summer. The influx of tourists bring with them garish beach umbrellas, trash in the sand and noisy boats that go SCREE. Neither Willy or his father have any use for the summerfolk; Joe goes out in his boat (neither fast nor fancy) to fish for cod and Willy spends his days in the swamp in his leaky old rowboat...until one day, a particularly eccentric summerfolk boy shows up and will not take no for an answer.
The book was written in 1968, so it's as outdated as Robert McCloskey's books about Maine, or Lawson and Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand...but I should like to think it was still worth reading. Certainly, there are still small towns on the water which are inundated with tourists in the summer. I should know, I live in one, and trust me, the details may change but the gist remains the same: then there were speedboats and peanut butter sandwiches while now there are jetskis and takeaway boxes, but summerfolk will always be with us. I can only hope that someday I get to meet the fairy summerfolk who took Willy under their wing for the day.
(http://josephinereadersadvisory.wordp...)
Willy and Joe Potts live in a shack on a sand dune; behind their house is a swamp and before it is a lovely sandy beach...which is overrun with "summerfolk" every summer. The influx of tourists bring with them garish beach umbrellas, trash in the sand and noisy boats that go SCREE. Neither Willy or his father have any use for the summerfolk; Joe goes out in his boat (neither fast nor fancy) to fish for cod and Willy spends his days in the swamp in his leaky old rowboat...until one day, a particularly eccentric summerfolk boy shows up and will not take no for an answer.
The book was written in 1968, so it's as outdated as Robert McCloskey's books about Maine, or Lawson and Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand...but I should like to think it was still worth reading. Certainly, there are still small towns on the water which are inundated with tourists in the summer. I should know, I live in one, and trust me, the details may change but the gist remains the same: then there were speedboats and peanut butter sandwiches while now there are jetskis and takeaway boxes, but summerfolk will always be with us. I can only hope that someday I get to meet the fairy summerfolk who took Willy under their wing for the day.
(http://josephinereadersadvisory.wordp...)
July 31, 2011
Willie Potts and his dad lead a simple life at the sea's edge...that is, until the Summer arrives, bringing with it all sorts of strangers who drive fast boats and leave peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on the beach. Willie and his dad have no use for these 'Summer Folk' until one magic day...the longest day of the year...when Willie sets off into the back waters away from the beach and runs into the most bizarre and interesting assortment of people he's ever met.
Lovingly illustrated by the author, Doris Burn spins a wide, meandering and altogether gentle tale of friends and acquaintences.
Lovingly illustrated by the author, Doris Burn spins a wide, meandering and altogether gentle tale of friends and acquaintences.
March 21, 2008
I just found this book at the library I'm volunteering at and remembered that I had read it as a child at my grandparents' house. No wonder I always wanted to be a pirate! This book is about a perfect summer day spent on the water. I really liked it.
July 6, 2008
I remember this book from my childhood. I wish I could find it now somewhere. I remember liking the mystical feel of the mysterious eccentric people who showed up only in summer.
Read
October 28, 2008Family favorite
July 26, 2012
One of my favorite children's books
April 27, 2014
Best book ever for kids!
September 16, 2014
A favorite from childhood about wanderlust and returning home.
September 27, 2014
this book has mine soul yewrought.
June 25, 2015
Doris Burn captures so delightfully, in word and picture, the joy of childhood.
Note: fortune telling cards mentioned
Note: fortune telling cards mentioned
July 4, 2013
This is a cute book!
April 26, 2018
Love the illustrations in this book. They’re drawn by the author and are very detailed. The story is good but it’s slightly awkward to read out loud and there is some vocabulary that is unfamiliar to me. Laidback but adventurous at the same time.
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