Summary: A Summers Reading is about a young man; George Stoyonovich, feels like people do not respect him in his neighborhood because he does not have a job and has not finished school. George feels like school was a waste of time because it did not teach about important aspects of life. Then George runs into a man that he respects, George exaggerates the reading he has done and soon people find out. George begins to feel respected in the neighborhood after people find out he reads.
Some background:
* In a typical immigrant neighborhood in New York City, everyone tries to
succeed.
* The key word is proper education, while moving through a dynamic process
of growing up and taking responsibility .
* Reading books in the summer is what George would like to do... But, will
he?
Major Characters:
o George Stoyonovich: The meaning of Stoyonovich in Polish is "Staying in one place". George is a nineteen-year-old high-school dropout living aimlessly in the working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. He "considered registering in a night high school" but "he did not like the idea of the teachers always telling him what to do. He felt they had not respected him."
o Sophie Stoyonovich: George's elder sister, a "tall bony girl of twenty-three" who works at a cafeteria in the Bronx. She has to take care of the house because their mother was dead. She sometimes reads "good books."
o Mr. Cattanzara: The meaning of Cattanzara in Italian is "Chained to a place". "Mr. C. is a stocky, bald-headed man who worked in a change booth on an IRT [subway] station," living on the next block to George's. He reads the New York Times "from the first page to the last"; in short, he is the "intellectual" of the neighborhood.