Books that Evoke an English Summer’s Day

While it’s true that English summers can have their share of rain and cold, there are also sure to be many picture-perfect days of warmth, buttercups, and grazing sheep. It’s the perfect time to visit a country house and have tea in the bursting-with-color gardens; take a long walk on a public footpath; or spend the day exploring a new market town or village.

On the Watch for Wonder:

A Summer of Reading E.B. White

All of E.B. White’s books evoke the spirit of summer—especially an old-fashioned childhood summer. Fern sits amongst the animals in the barn, flies through the air on Uncle Homer’s swing, and travels to the fair in Charlotte’s Web. Stuart wins the sailboat race in Central Park and drives north in his car on a hot day, stopping for a cold sarsaparilla in Stuart Little. Louis the Swan works as a junior counselor at a boys’ summer camp in The Trumpet of the Swan. All three of these novels reflect White’s attention to the animal life in his own farmyard in Maine where he spent his later years.