The boy reveals that while he wants to take them back to his country where they can fly forever, and be children forever, without adult responsibilities, the cost of following him is that they will never be able to return to their homes and their loved ones. Charlotte realises that the boy is not telling them the whole truth, and forces the boy to admit the truth. As summer draws to an end, the boy offers to take the children on a journey, and the children prepare to go with the boy. The children spend an idyllic summer flying above their village and the downs. The boy tells her that he is unable to teach her to fly: he can only teach children. The boy remains invisible to the adults, with the exception of the schoolteacher, Miss Hallibutt, who herself, as a child, had wished that she could fly. Over the following days and weeks, the boy teaches Charlotte to fly, and then the other children at the school learn this ability. On the way to their small English village school, they meet and befriend a mysterious boy who tells them that he is able to teach them to fly. Named Aviary Hall, the house is decorated with stuffed birds and images of birds.
Plot summary Ĭharlotte and Emma Makepeace are children living with their grandfather, Elijah, in a country house in the South Downs in southern England. The main settings of the book are a small village school in the South Downs in southern England, and Aviary Hall, the girls' home.Īccording to Farmer, Charlotte and Emma, who grow up in their Grandfather Elijah's house, were originally based on her mother and her mother's sister as children, having no parents and "…having to be everything to each other," one being the responsible one, the other being rather difficult. Farmer took one story originally intended for The China People, but which proved too long to include, writing, "It was too big an idea, too bony as a short story." This was rewritten as the first chapter of The Summer Birds (1962), her first book featuring Charlotte and Emma Makepeace. McElderry of Harcourt Brace to write a children's novel.
Whilst working as a teacher for the London County Council Education Department, she was approached by editor Margaret K. Background Īt the age of twenty-one, Penelope Farmer was contracted for her first collection of short stories, The China People. It is the first of three books featuring the Makepeace sisters, Charlotte and Emma, These three books are sometimes known as the Aviary Hall books. The Summer Birds is a children's novel by British writer Penelope Farmer, published in 1962 by Chatto & Windus, and receiving a Carnegie Medal commendation.
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