There are few seasons that elicit quite so much lyricism from children’s writers as late summer, when the days are just beginning to shorten. Maybe it’s a symbolism thing: The end of summer means the end of childhood and innocence, so late summer leaves you right on the bittersweet precipice.

As another summer comes to an unofficial close, here are three passages that capture the warmth and melancholy of this time of year.

Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

Laura sat in the grass to watch [Pa] go once around. The heat there smelled as good as an oven when bread is baking. The little brown-and-yellow striped gophers were hurrying again, all about her. Tiny birds fluttered and flew to cling to bending grass-stems, balancing lightly. A striped garter snake came flowing and curving through the forest of grass. Sitting hunched with her chin on her knees, Laura felt as big as a mountain when the snake curved up its head and stared at the high wall of her calico skirt. Its round eyes were shining like beads, and its tongue was flickering so fast that it looked like a tiny jet of steam. The whole bright-striped snake had a gentle look. Laura knew that garter snakes will not harm anyone, and they are good to have on a farm because they eat the insects that spoil crops. It stretched its neck low again and, making a perfectly square turn in itself because it could not climb over Laura, it went flowing around her and away in the grass.