Short-Story Filter?

February 24, 2007 10:57 PM

I read this short story in middle/jr high school, and I have no idea what the name of it is. It's going to bother me until I find out.

...It was this class of kids on another planet, where the sun only came out once in a great while, and otherwise it rained. There was a little girl in the class who the other kids didn't like for whatever reason, and the day the sun was supposed to come out, they ganged up on her and locked her up in a closet while the rest of them frolicked in the sun. I've checked google, and apparently I'm not searching for the right things, because I've never found anything remotely close to it. I was reminded of it forever ago and still have absolutely no clue what it was called. It's one of those things that I now need to know just for the sake of knowing. Please help! :(

posted by lisawin to writing & language (17 answers total)

it sounds like All Summer In A Day by Ray Bradbury
posted by sxtxixtxcxh at 11:03 PM on February 24, 2007

Ray Bradbury's "All Summer In A Day"?
posted by curse at 11:03 PM on February 24, 2007

All summer in a day - Ray Bradbury?
posted by Rumple at 11:03 PM on February 24, 2007

tripleheader!
posted by Rumple at 11:04 PM on February 24, 2007

Three near-identical answers in the same minute! dang!
posted by MadamM at 11:08 PM on February 24, 2007

It's got to be that story - like you, I read it in middle school, and it's haunted me ever since.
posted by lalex at 11:12 PM on February 24, 2007

:) and every one of them linking to the same exact page.

*high-fives all around.*
posted by sxtxixtxcxh at 11:14 PM on February 24, 2007

Well, that was quick. And that's exactly the story. Thanks, guys :D
posted by lisawin at 11:20 PM on February 24, 2007

This is a popular "what's the story called question?" Not blaming you, since you really couldn't search the archives for the title...

Oh, and another Bradbury story I remember from middle school: There Will Come Soft Rains, about an automated house carrying on after a nuclear holocaust.
posted by ALongDecember at 11:22 PM on February 24, 2007

A few stories I almost posted to Ask Metafilter about turned out to be Bradbury stories. There's something perfectly haunting about his early short stories. An excerpt from All Summer in a Day:

The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces; they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.
And then -
In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.
Everyone stopped.
The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.
"Oh, look, look," she said, trembling.
They came slowly to look at her opened palm.
In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop. She began to cry, looking at it. They glanced quietly at the sun.
"Oh. Oh."
posted by vacapinta at 11:40 PM on February 24, 2007

Another popular one in school textbooks is "The Veldt."
posted by kindall at 11:44 PM on February 24, 2007

Link to the story (google cache of a .doc)
posted by chrisamiller at 11:54 PM on February 24, 2007

Wow, flashback. We read that in Jr. Great Books (program at a Florida public elementary school, not sure where else) during 5th or 6th grade.

Next up, Echo and Narcissus.
posted by empyrean at 12:56 AM on February 25, 2007

That was creepy.
posted by danb at 7:06 AM on February 25, 2007

I remember seeing a movie version of this at school.
posted by jedrek at 7:55 AM on February 25, 2007

Yep, I totally remember that story. I think it was in the "Great Books" program that many schools ran in their libraries after school. (You bought the books with the short stories in them and met afterschool to discuss).
posted by NoraCharles at 12:02 PM on February 25, 2007

Thanks so much for reminding me of this. I thought of "The Veldt" the other day for the same reason. Thank god for Bradbury.
posted by lindsey.nicole at 7:09 PM on February 25, 2007