Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/essayist-discusses-views-on-time-in-the-summer Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Guest NewsHour Essayist Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine talks about time passing in the summer. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. NANCY GIBBS, Time Magazine: What is it about summer that makes children grow? We feed and water them more. They do get more sun, but that probably doesn't matter as much as the book they read or the rule they broke that taught them something they couldn't have learned any other way.The school year channels them so efficiently through their lessons, their practices, their many pools of obligation. Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do.Pour a liquid out of its container and it changes shape, fills the space you give it. If you give children a lot of space, it may surprise you where they'll go and the shape they'll take.Our family goes back to the same place every summer, a little town on a lake, and the place itself is as precise a measuring stick as the pencil marks on the kitchen doorway. YOUNG GIRL: Right there. Look. That's you.