Hi,
This is my first post here and I come for help..I am trying to get ahold of the story where there are children in space and a girl who has seen the sun and is always talking about it but no one else has..there is some sort of big event where the sun can be seen and the children lock this girl in so she misses the sun. It has been a long time since I read this story so I don't remember the exact details but hopefully someone will know what I am talking about. If anyone knows what story this is from (and if it is a book or a short story) please let me know. I would love to read it again.
Thanks,
Tami

The story is called, "All Summer in a day" and is absolutely great. If you liked this one, try the following stories:

"The Pedestrian"
"The Skeleton"
"The Dwarf"
"The Long Rain"
"Kaleidoscope"
"There Will Come Soft Rains"
"The Rocket Man"
"Fever Dream"
"Frost and Fire"
"The Veldt"
"Mars is Heaven"
"Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed"

For books, be sure to read "Farenheit 451", "Martian Chronicles", "Rocket Man", "October Country" and " Something Wicked This way Comes".

He has so much great stuff. If you decide to pursue him, you will not regret it.

Enjoy.

Hi Mr. Dark,

Thank you so much! I jotted down those titles and will definitely read them as soon as possible. I'll keep you updated(:

Not a problem. Glad to help.

Bradbury lends himself to far more literary depth than he sometimes gets credit for. As I get older, I get a greater sense of what he tells us about the human condition and threats to our humanity. His writing style -- which is great -- sometimes seems to work against him. It is so beautiful and poetic, it makes his stories seem more elementary than they really are.

Here is a reply I wrote to someone asking about his story, The Dwarf:

"The Dwarf is actually a pretty complex story. It deals with issues of secrecy, compassion, cruelty, social normalcy, etc.
The dwarf certainly goes into the mirror house to see himself as normal in the mirror. But his writing is also an effort to be normal. Because he is abnormal and has no real social outlet, his writing lets him, at least at some level, communicate with his culture. The excerpt from the novel he wrote seems auto-biographical and lets the reader know the dwarf was precluded from any vestige of a normal life. Going to the mirror house and writing, are two ways he tries to be normal.

I'm not sure I see evidence in the story that he tries to be viewed as normal by others. He is working on trying to view himself as normal.

Ralph, the mean guy, represents man's total lack of compassion for others. In fact, he is not just apathetic, he is cruel and without any social conscience. At some level, Ralph is a sociopath.

Aimee clearly represents the compassionate side of mankind; but in a typical Bradbarian twist, her effort to manifest that compassion leads to an act of emotional violence that is just horrendous in its impact on the dwarf. Compassion is a good in the story, but there is some risk in trying to "do" it.

Ralph's comments that the dwarf has this secret seems to go back to Nathaniel Hawthorne's themes in "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Young Goodman Brown," which is that each man carries hidden parts of himself that he cannot bear to have known by those outside themselves. Ralph, evil pig that he is, is sensitive to the dwarf's secret. Ralph also knows how to manipulate that information kept in secret to deliver the greatest amount of emotional destruction possible.

Ralph also recognizes that the dwarf has a level of pride that won't let him become a part of the community because it would mean revealing his secret and his hurt -- and the dwarf is not willing to do that. This pride also means that efforts to assist him -- even good-hearted ones -- could be rejected by the dwarf, who would not want to accept "pity".

Again, by implication, mankind has to deal with these emotional issues of self-protection and secrecy. We remain isolated when pride, fear, hatred, and doubt keep us apart from others.

Aimee talks about the idea of compensatory capabilities -- that people deprived in one area (in this case a normal body) are compensated in other areas ("He's got a soul as big as all outdoors").

It is possible that both of you would be well served by going back over this story and reading it more carefully in order to see what Bradbury is saying about the human condition. This is what makes Bradbury great -- that he is able to create these apparently simple stories that can point out so many aspects of what the human condition really is. HIs gift with language is a wonderful plus. But the truth is that his best stories have real bite."

Anyway, I hope you end up liking him as much as I, and many others on these message boards, do.