Before Reading All Summer in a Day Short Story by Ray Bradbury VIDEO TRAILER KEYWORD: HML6-66 What if your whole WORLDchanged? People often become comfortable in the familiar world of their family, friends, and daily routines. However, people move and traditions change. When your world changes, whether by a little or a lot, it can READING 6A Summarize have an impact on your life. In “All Summer in a Day,” a young girl elements of plot development feels lost in a new place. (e.g., rising action, turning point, climax, falling action, denouement) in various works SKETCH IT Think about the people, places, events, and ideas that are of fiction. RC-6(D) Make inferences about text. most precious to you. Create a sketch of your world, showing some of the things that make it a special place. How would you feel if any of these things disappeared? 66 TX_L06PE-u01s03-brSumm.indd 66 2/13/09 4:00:14 PM Meet the Author literary analysis: plot and setting The plot is the series of events that make up a story, including Ray Bradbury the conflict and its resolution. Setting is where and when a born 1920 story takes place. In science fiction stories, the setting is often Vivid Imagination the distant future. This setting usually causes the events of the As a boy in Illinois, Ray Bradbury had plot to unfold in an unexpected way. As you read “All Summer a passion for adventure stories, secret in a Day,” look for clues that tell you when and where the story code rings, and comic strips. He takes place. Then think about the setting’s influence on the started writing fi ction to create his story’s conflict and resolution, or denouement. own imaginary worlds. Review: Conflict Creative Genius While some of Bradbury’s most reading skill: make inferences famous stories are science fi ction, he doesn’t think of himself as a science As a reader you are a detective. Details, events, and dialogue fi ction writer. Instead, he thinks of in a story are your clues. You put the clues together with himself as someone who simply writes your own knowledge to make inferences, or guesses. what he sees, just “through a different As you read “All Summer in a Day,” use an equation like lens.” Though he writes about future the one shown to record the inferences you make about the technology and space travel, Bradbury characters’ feelings and their actions. is a bit old-fashioned. He has never learned to drive a car, preferring to get Clues from the Story + My Knowledge = Inference around by riding a bicycle. Margot is not part of + Not being part = Margot background to the story the group. of a group can feels sad. make you feel sad. Beyond Summer When Bradbury wrote “All Summer in a Day” in 1954, very little was known Review: Identify Cause and Effect about Venus. The mysterious planet lay hidden beneath a very heavy vocabulary in context layer of clouds. Scientists learned a Ray Bradbury uses the words below to create a world that is few years later that this dense cloud very different from our own. Complete each sentence with cover did not result in constant rain, an appropriate word from the list. as occurs in Bradbury’s story. Instead, the clouds appear to trap heat. The word apparatus resilient slacken temperature at the surface of the list immense savor tumultuously planet is about 860°F, which is much too hot for rainfall. 1. The leaves shook ______, and we were scared. 2. The ______ planet offered many areas to explore. 3. The sturdy shelters are built to be ______. 4. After the storm, the wind began to ______. AuthorAuthor OOnlinenline 5. The ______ used to open the hatch was broken. GoGo to thinkcentral.comthinkcentral.com. 6. She sat quietly to ______ everything around her. KEYWORD:KEYWORD: HML6-67HML6-67 Complete the activities in your Reader/Writer Notebook. 67 TX_L06PE-u01s03-brSumm.indd 67 2/13/09 4:00:21 PM in a Ray Bradbury “ eady?” “Ready.” What words would you “Now?” use to describe this photograph? “Soon.” “Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?” “Look, look; see for yourself!” The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun. Language Coach It rained. Dialogue Reread lines 10 It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of 1–8. Notice that Bradbury days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with does not identify who is speaking. Who is the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and speaking? the concussion1 of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown a SETTING up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was Reread lines 7–18. forever on the planet Venus, and this was the school room of the children What do the details suggest about where of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up and when the story civilization and live out their lives. a takes place? 1. concussion (kEn-kOshPEn): pounding. 68 unit 1: plot, conflict, and setting TX_L06PE-u01s03-Summer.indd 68 9/25/09 8:11:01 AM TX_L06PE-u01s03-Summer.indd 69 2/13/09 4:02:14 PM “It’s stopping, it’s stopping!” SCIENCE CONNECTION 20 “Yes, yes!” Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew that they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the Exploration of Venus face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they began with a “flyby” spacecraft from the 2 30 always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear Soviet Union in 1961 and bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forest, and their another from the United dreams were gone. States in 1962. Since All day yesterday they had read in class, about the sun. About how like then, orbiting spacecraft and robotic equipment a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays have provided pictures or poems about it: and information about conditions on Venus. “I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.” Language Coach That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom Dialogue Reread lines while the rain was falling outside. 40–42. How can you tell 40 “Aw, you didn’t write that!” protested one of the boys. who is speaking in line 40? “I did,” said Margot. “I did.” “William!” said the teacher. But that was yesterday. Now, the rain was slackening, and the children slacken (slBkPEn) v. to were crushed to the great thick windows. slow down or lessen “Where’s teacher?” “She’ll be back.” “She’d better hurry, we’ll miss it!” They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had 50 been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. “What’re you looking at?” said William. Margot said nothing. 2. tatting drum: a continuous, soft, beating sound. 70 unit 1: plot, conflict, and setting TX_L06PE-u01s03-Summer.indd 70 2/13/09 4:02:19 PM “Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather, she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them 60 go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games, her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move, as she watched the drenched windows. And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was, when she was four, in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old 70 when last the sun came out, and had long since forgotten the color and b b CONFLICT heat of it and the way that it really was.