Terry Widener

This is a story about four friends and their summer adventures. They play all day enjoying ice cream and baseball games. They play into the night and watch the fireflies arrive. While they are playing the night away, animals begin making sounds as the children also become creatures of the night. The friends catch fireflies in jars and believe their fireflies are sending signals to the moon and stars. When their parents call them home for the night, they decide to let the fireflies go to be show more free with the stars. As Johnny begins to fall asleep he realizes that summer is almost over and the days come and go just like the fireflies do. I enjoyed this book by London. He was very descriptive with his sounds just how "Froggy gets dressed" was. Whenever an animal makes a noise in the story he writes it into the sentences. The owls "hoo" and the crickets sing "cricket cricket". He also does this for various other sounds such as the ice cream man's song and the screen doors closing. I really like this way of writing because I feel that it makes the story more real the children. It pulls you into the story and you have more of an experience with the story, you are taken to a different level. show less

The illustrations in this book are colorful and the story is told simply with a hint of poetic rhythm. When the fireflies come is a story describing a fun long summer’s evening and all the joy that comes with it. This story incorporates onomatopoeia and would be a great book to introduce that type of poetry.

This is a story about a boys activities in the summer. I was not crazy about this book. It was written in a poetic way, but I felt it to be a little wordy, and it didn't hold my attention like I expected it to.

A book about summer and the sights and sounds that mean summer. A story about kids scrambling to catch the blinking bugs in jars only to let them go when its time to go home.