The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

First published: 1970; illustrated

Type of work: Domestic realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, emotions, and family

Time of work: The early 1970’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: A small town in West Virginia

Principal Characters:

• Sara Godfrey, a bright, observant fourteen-year-old girl who is dealing with the problems that accompany adolescence
• Charlie, her ten-year old retarded brother
• Wanda, her pretty older sister, who is studying to become a nurse
• Aunt Willie, who has reared the three children since their mother died six years ago
• Mary Weicek, Sara’s best friend
• Sam Godfrey, Sara’s father, a defeated man
• Joe Melby, a boy Sara regards as a thief and tormentor of her brother Charlie
• Frank, Wanda’s red-haired, fun-loving boyfriend

The Story

Because of the simplicity of both its plot and its setting, The Summer of the Swans might be dismissed as just another coming-of-age novel, were it not for the particular nature of the adjustments the protagonist must make. Along with the usual problems of teenage adjustments, Sara Godfrey must deal with the fact that her ten-year-old brother is not and never will be “normal.” Charlie is mentally retarded.

At fourteen, Sara is undergoing great changes, though she cannot seem to find any particular detail that distinguishes this summer from the last, or the one before that. She visits the local Dairy Queen with her best friend Mary, watches television, and babysits for the neighbor. The design of the summer is all too familiar, yet the texture is different. Sara finds herself on an emotional seesaw; one moment she is ecstatically happy, and the next she is disconsolate. She hates the orange sneakers that until recently were her pride and joy. She hates her height, her big feet, her crooked nose. She feels a new resentment toward her beautiful older sister and absolutely chafes at any show of authority on the part of Aunt Willie.

Woven into this tapestry of Sara’s discontent is a new thread of feeling that she has long denied—her ambivalence toward Charlie and his special problem. Stricken by fever at the age of three, Charlie is brain-damaged and severely retarded. He is incapable of speech yet somehow manages to print letters of the alphabet. He brandishes his wristwatch at the slightest provocation, yet he cannot tell time. As Sara matures, as her body grows and her emotions evolve, she is struck by the realization that Charlie cannot change. He will forever be the little boy who cannot place his sticky sucker back on its stick, who cannot tie his own shoelaces or find his way around town without the aid of another person. He is trapped in a world of simple pleasures and can while away an entire afternoon digging a hole in the yard or lying beneath a homemade tent.

Combined with Charlie’s inability to develop (and thus adding to Sara’s misery) is the community’s growing awareness of Charlie’s shortcomings. The larger his body grows, the more apparent it is that his mind cannot keep pace. Other children tease him and call him “retarded” (a word Sara hates). A neighbor asks Charlie the time, knowing that he will gladly show his watch though he cannot begin to read it. Even Wanda talks about Charlie in a psychology class, reemphasizing to Sara that Charlie is different and that that difference is worthy of note.

The single event that most forcefully hammers home the nature of Charlie’s uniqueness is the incident from which the book takes its name. Sara escorts Charlie to a nearby pond to observe a flock of swans during their migration. Later that same night, Charlie mistakes a neighbor’s white cat for the swans and imagines that they have come for him. He leaves the safety of his bedroom in pursuit of the birds and soon becomes lost in a wooded ravine on the outskirts of town. Charlie’s absence goes unnoticed until the following morning, when a search party is mobilized. The frantic search for her little brother forces Sara to realize how dependent and helpless he truly is. In the process she reexamines her relationship with Joe Melby, the boy she suspected of stealing Charlie’s watch, and with her father, whose absence she has long equated with disinterest.

Though Sara and the searchers eventually locate Charlie, the young people’s lives will never be quite the same. Sara has been forced to confront her brother’s vulnerability, but at the same time she has learned that not everyone is allied against him.

A subsequent invitation to a young people’s party is also an invitation for Sara to get on with her life.

Context

The Summer of the Swans was the recipient of the Newbery Medal in 1971 and has become one of Byars’ best-known novels. She tells a good story in a smooth, succinct style and addresses the universal emotions of childhood with sympathy and humor.

Byars is recognized as a popular and prolific author of contemporary realism for both middle grade and junior high readers. She writes about children who are loners or those who have problems with peer or family relationships. In The 18th Emergency (1973) she deals with a boy’s emotional battles as he works through his fears and accepts life as it is rather than as he would wish it to be. In The Pinballs (1977), a story of child abuse, she follows three lonely foster children as they move into a supportive environment and begin slowly to comprehend the idea of caring for others.

Aside from dealing with human fears and relationships, Byars addresses the experience of the relationship between human beings and nature in The House of Wings (1972). In this work she explores the theme of persons in need of nature to restore spiritual needs. In The Winged Colt of Casa Mia (1973), she deals with the relationship of a boy and a man, intertwined with a boy’s love for an animal. Here she combines realism and fantasy.

Even though the main body of her work is contemporary realistic fiction, Byars wrote and illustrated a picture book, The Lace Snail, with a valuable message to the young reader: Just as the snail’s gift is to make lace, the most generous gifts are those that are given naturally. It is a powerful message.

Byars’ works have been translated into Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Japanese, and Norwegian. The Summer of the Swans was dramatized and presented on national television and is only one of her books that remain popular with young readers.