The Summer Book

Sophia and her elderly grandmother spend the summer on a tiny island. Sophia, who is six years old, is just beginning to learn about the world, and her grandmother is preparing to leave it. While Sophia’s father works, Sophia and her grandmother spend their time exploring, creating, and raising one another. That sounds quite sentimental, but this isn’t a sentimental book; the grandmother is practical and cranky, Sophia can be a bit of a bully, and island life isn’t all bucolic. Instead, it’s a matter-of-fact but masterfully narrated exploration of island life, from the natural world to the island’s inhabitants to the big questions of life and death, told from both ends of the human lifespan.

If you, like Sophia, are about to spend a summer in relative isolation in the wake of big changes in your life, this book would be an excellent companion. It won’t try to tell you that everything will be okay, but it will help you notice, marvel at, and find meaning in your surroundings, and in Sophia and her grandmother, it will provide you with two excellent companions.