DECATUR - The shrieks of children playing in a pool.

Crickets and katydids singing while fireflies wink on and off at dusk.

The smell of sheets dried outside on the clothesline.

Sitting outside at night while trickles of sweat chase each other down the back of your T-shirt.

"Summer to me.;means sunshine, warm temperatures, beautiful flowers, long days, the sound of children playing in the park or splashing in a pool," said Dawn Torchia, director of community engagement for Decatur public schools. "I think of vacationing on a sandy beach or spending the evening relaxing on the front porch. I think of cookouts and pool parties. Summer definitely means fun times with family and friends."

Each season has its own character and lesson, and summer's is to slow down and notice that each day matters, say the editors of "Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season."

"In North America, we want to insulate ourselves from days and seasons," said Gary Schmidt, who edited the book with colleague Susan M. Felch. "We get in cars, and they're air-conditioned, but maybe those seasons have things to tell us."

Schmidt and Felch, both literature professors at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., also have compiled books on autumn and winter and are working on one dedicated to spring. The books contain selections by authors and poets from Walt Whitman to Ray Bradbury, with the idea that each season has a spiritual message.

In the "Summer" book, Schmidt said, he and Felch decided to be more playful, as befits summer itself, and included recipes, illustrations of vegetables instead of bucolic summer scenes, and the full text of the Declaration of Independence.

"I don't think many of us have read the whole Declaration," Schmidt said. "I think people can get a lot out of it."

But the main message is in the book's preface:

"Time in the summer does not seem to move; instead, time collects, or perhaps it might be better said to pool. One of the spiritual lessons of summer is just that: to allow time to pool. To halt in our headlong rush."

Decatur Superintendent Elmer "Mac" McPherson laughs about how people think administrators aren't working just because school is out.

"A huge portion of the work we do gets done during the summer, and a lot of that is really the work for the ensuing year," he said. "It begins somewhere around December or January for the start of the next year."

But that work is done at a more relaxed pace, and in summer, he can catch up with some fun, too.

"For me, the fun part of summertime is being able to be with children in my family and visit with them and have them visit us and do some fun things," McPherson said. "We go to the zoo, go to Jungles of Fun and Chuck E. Cheese. I don't get to do a lot of that in the course of the year, and summer's a time when I can."

Mayor Paul Osborne considers summer's official arrival the day he first gets his classic Corvette out of the garage and takes down the top.

"In the winter, I don't drive it at all, you know," he said.

Summer's best attraction, to Osborne, is the freedom from coats and gloves and boots. When he was a boy, it was being able to go barefoot that made summer special.

"Feeling the grass under your feet and your soles getting tough so you can walk on hot walks," Osborne said.

One selection in the book, from Ray Bradbury, recalls the freedom and seemingly endless sunny days of childhood.

"Some of the most powerful memories of summer come out of our childhood, when we wake up on a June morning and suddenly remember that school is out and summer stretches in front of us as endlessly as the infinities of space," Bradbury wrote. "Everything is different. The old routines are gone. The relentless school bus isn't coming. The bells will be silent in silent hallways. And all the world is a leafy green, and will be green, forever and ever."

Valerie Wells can be reached at vwells@;herald-review.com or 421-7982.