THEN AND NOW: Revisiting a Childhood Book, Summer Outing

Caroline (age 4) and her brother Steve (10 mos.)

More than half a century ago, when I was four years old, my parents took a photo of me holding a book called Summer Outing. Next to me is my younger brother Steve. We were on a visit to the family farm in Ohio where my grandfather had grown up. I have no recollection of reading that book, but I have used the photo for many years in my author visit slide show at schools and libraries to illustrate my love for books as a young child.

Caroline with Summer Outing, 2023

Recently I decided to search online for Summer Outing and discovered a copy for sale at a used book supplier in Arkansas. I ordered the book and when it arrived, found that it had been published in 1902! The book is a bit worse for wear and one of its previous owners, Helene, has written her name in school girl script on the first page. She, or perhaps someone else, has colored in some of the drawings with crayons. But otherwise, the book is intact. 

Illustrated with black and white line drawings, it is a collection of poems and moralistic tales aimed at “young people”-- stories about Captain Bob (the boy who went fishing without telling his family), Spitz (a dog) and the Geese, The Disappointed Kitty (who didn’t catch the mouse), a poem about polliwogs, and many more. The stories are a window onto childhood a long time ago.

Inside pages of Summer Outing, published by Homewood Publishing Company, Chicago, 1902

In 1902, my grandfather, the oldest of six children, had already left the farm  to make a life for himself in Chicago, so perhaps the book had been purchased for his younger siblings. I will never know. But the fact that it had been kept for nearly fifty years shows that the family valued books. That love for books and reading was passed on to my grandfather, my father, and to me.

Books have always been an important part of my life.  My parents read to me when I was small, took me to the library, and when I got older I learned to read by myself. Summer Outing looks old-fashioned today and the text is antiquated, but I am glad that I have rediscovered it. 

Polliwogs

The cat-tails all along the brook are growing tall and green;

And in the meadow-pool, once more, the polliwogs are seen;

Among the duck-weed, in and out,

As quick as thought they dart about.

“Be patient, little polliwogs,

And by and by you’ll turn to frogs.”