“Remember when you used to read The Indian in the Cupboard on the beach?” My cousin Suzie asked me that earlier this summer. I was kind of thunderstruck because I actually *didn’t* really remember it, at least not at first. But yes, I used to read aloud on the beach and there was a summer when we read The Indian in the Cupboard.

That series of books (I think there are now five) is by Lynne Reid Banks. They are written for kids in grades 4-8 but it seemed like most everybody on the beach, all ages, would listen along with my urchins. In my not particularly humble opinion, they’re just as good as Harry Potter. And I’m an HP fan. Well, I don’t wear those ridiculous glasses or hang out at Borders waiting for the next book. (Uh, don’t be fooled. Froog’s HP glasses washed up on the beach along with all those leeks that were there at the beginning of the summer. I did *not* buy them!)

Those were the days. Hanging out on the beach all day watching all the G4 beach urchins swim and dig holes and make sand cupcakes and pour water all over Radical Betty’s feet and play with toads and row the old dinghy and shake up cans of beer before delivering them to The Commander and Grandroobly. Watching boats and birds and aircraft and clouds and people with binoculars. Discussions about an eclectic array of topics: the art of bat cookery, astrology (“I am NOT a Taurus!!”, thundered one particularly typical Taurean), and, well, anything under the sun, the fewer facts known about the subject, the better. And reading aloud.

Sooner or later, the sun would get to a certain point and we would all start to feel just a bit overdone. Sunburned and dried out. Somebody would ask, “What time is it?” And somebody else would ask, “Well, where is the sun?” I would stand up and grab my beach chair and yell, “Over the yardarm!!” and head down the beach, over the bank, and up the path to the cabin, my two tan, tow-headed little beach urchins trailing happily behind me. Well, *some* of the time they were trailing happily. I won’t even begin to try to claim that was true *every* day.

Summer is over. I read a lot of good books this summer and one bad book but not Indian in the Cupboard. Can I have one of those cupboards? Will it take me back to past times on the beach? Who will keep track of the key? Those were the days.

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