Summer Time

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       October 29, 2019

 

Author  Hilary Bell, Antonia Pesenti

Distributor:      New South Books
ISBN:                 9781742236070
Publisher:         NewSouth
Release Date:   October 2019  

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Best selling authors Antonia Pesenti & Hilary Bell are back with a nostalgic return to the summer holidays of their youth in Summer Time, a trip down memory lane with rhyming text, gloriously vibrant, summer colour illustration and a huge amount of fun to be enjoyed once again.

Summer time in Australia is something very special for everyone; families gather at the beach, go camping or holidaying at some very interesting locations, staying in places far different to their homes, children are allowed more freedom to explore and ice-cream is the order of the day, whenever possible.

It is a time of magic, a time when memories are made to last a life time and time to simply be yourself, wearing your daggy old bathers and having fun; and that’s for grown-up as well. Everyone relaxes, enjoying the long, lazy heat filled days of summer.

Sausages are cooked on the barbeque until they are slightly charred, you feel like your melting when it gets to hot to swim, pink zinc is put on to try and stop the sunburnt noses. Back in the days before air-conditioning, fans whirred furiously trying to cool the hot air; Hair got soaked with sweat, waiting to go to the beach to cool off.

Mozzies feasted fast and furiously in the early evening, leaving behind red itchy spots and tomorrow, it was all there to be done again. Bushfires devastate the bushlands and all too soon it was time to try on new school shoes and watch the evening skies full of stars, as Emu returned to fly for all eternity in the Milky Way.

With summer almost here once again Summer Time brings back those halcyon days when once we were young and for the young of today, memories of their own to be made with adventures still to be discovered.

Are these nostalgic days of summer simply an Australian myth? Most definitely not as these were the summer days of my youth and are now the summer days of my grandchildren, so no, the memories are alive and well, each and every summer at the beaches and at the swimming pools of Australia, being created once again for a new generation to enjoy.

You can almost smell the sunscreen, the sausages cooking on the barbeque and the heat melting the bitumen on the roads, as you take your children on a voyage of once, when you were young, and summer days never seemed to end.