The Wheel on the School
Author:
Meindert DeJong
Content:
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
Illustrator:
Maurice Sendak
Publication:
1954 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc
Genre:
Fiction, World Cultures
Pages:
298
Current state:
This book has been evaluated and information added. It has been read but content considerations may not be complete.
Book Guide
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This winner of the 1955 Newbery Award, by the author of SHADRACH and HURRY HOME, CANDY (both runner-ups for the 1954 Newbery Award), is a masterpiece of story-telling, full of dramatic action and suspense.
It all started because Lina, one of the six school children in the little Dutch fishing village of Shora, wrote a composition about storks. It was not a long composition, because Lina did not know much about storks. The storks never came to Shora to build their nests, as they did in the neighboring villages. Lina's composition set the children to wondering—Why didn't the storks come to Shora?—and sometimes when you begin to wonder Why? you can begin to make things happen.
The children had to overcome many obstacles, and sometimes everything seemed to be against them, including the fierce and threatening sea. But because they wondered and believed and never gave up, they succeeded in doing the impossible; and the long dream—storks on every roof in Shora—began to come true.
The black-and-white drawings by Maurice Sendak are a perfect complement to the text.
From the dust jacket
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Meindert DeJong
1906 - 1991Dutch American
Meindert DeJong was born in Wierum, the Netherlands, and lived there until he was eight years old. In 1914, his family came to the United States and... See more
Maurice Sendak
1928-2012American
Maurice Sendak, an author-illustrator of world renown, is the creator of such distinguished children's books as NUTSHELL LIBRARY; HIGGLETY PIGGLETY ... See more
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Reviews
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
Reviewed by Sherry Early
This winner of the 1955 Newbery Award Medal is a winner indeed. The children of Shora, a small village on the Netherlands coast, all six of them, realize one day that the storks never come to Shora to nest. Storks nest on the roofs of houses in other neighboring villages, but not in Shora.
So, the children, along with their schoolteacher, team up to find out why the storks don’t nest in Shora and to fix it so that they do. The project is a difficult one, and the children intend to work hard to bring the storks, or at least one stork, to Shora as the birds begin to migrate to the Netherlands from their homes in Africa.
The Wheel on the School
Reviewed by Jenny Phillips
This Newbery Medal book, written in 1954, is a delightful gem that takes place in a little Dutch fishing village named Shora...
Read the full review on The Good and the Beautiful Book List
The Wheel on the School
A long book with its gentle, minute details and character studies- this may demand a special interest for enjoyment...
The Wheel on the School
Lina asks why the storks no longer nest in her city, Shora...
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