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‘We need the literature of other countries to expand our
horizons and stimulate our ideas. Without it, we are not only
diminished, we are starved’
(The Times, Magnus Linklater 29/06/05)

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Title: Garmann's Summer

Author: Stian Hole

Translator: Don Bartlett

Illustrator:

Publisher: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers (USA)

Date Published: 2024

Format: Paperback

Genre:

Book Category: Picture Book

Age Range: 6-8

Original Title: First published in Norwegian as Garmanns Sommer, J. W. Cappelen Forlag, Norway, 2006. First English edition by Eerdmans, 2008

Country of Origin: Norway

Garmann's Summer

by Stian Hole
Age Range: 6-8

Six-year-old Garmann’s summer is nearly over. Soon he will be starting school and he’s scared. His three elderly aunts are making their annual visit and as Garmann asks each member of his family about their own fears he finds comfort in their responses. Auntie Ruth tells him she is afraid she will soon have to use a walker with wheels, while Garmann’s father, a violinist, says he gets nervous before every concert and his mother tells him she’s scared of Garmann crossing the main road on his way to school. Garmann asks Auntie Borghild if she’s scared of dying – “Yes, Garmann, I’m scared of leaving you.” she tells him. And Auntie Augusta doesn’t even remember what it’s like to be scared.

Garmann’s Summer, first published in English in 2006, is a ground-breaking picture book. It would be easy to reject it at first sight since it’s very different to many mainstream children’s titles but that would be a shame as this is a book that is definitely worth spending some time looking at.

Norwegian author and artist Stian Hole’s story, translated by Don Bartlett, deftly examines a young boy’s anxieties and fear of his first day at school. Garmann’s observations of his aunts’ ageing and a dead sparrow he finds in the garden, allow him to understand that fear is a natural part of growing up. Hole cleverly taps into the relationship of a young child to elderly adults showing he can connect to them in a way that perhaps other adults cannot and weaves Garmann’s fear with the grown-up fears of (leaving, death and messing up). Through Garmann’s questioning of the adults, he realises that everyone is afraid of something.

Hole uses a mixed media of collages, drawings, and photographs which have a real retro feel. Whilst the artwork will not be to everyone’s taste, – perhaps because it reflects the ageing process so honestly with the closeups of the wrinkly aunts, it is certainly powerful, especially the final image of Garmann looking wistfully out of the window watching the first leaf fall from the apple tree indicating that his summer is over while his packed backpack stands on the floor behind him – “thirteen hours to go before school starts. And Garmann is scared."

Garmann’s Summer won the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2007; the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and a Mildred L. Batchelder Honor in 2009.

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