The Wheel on the School, Newbery Winner 1955

This book has been a pleasant surprise. First off, it is from the 50's which haven't been getting too much love from me. My first impression glancing it over was that it reminded me of Dobry (bad.bad.bad.). And lastly, Maurice Sendak is okay, I like his art but it is rarely associated with works that I love.
And I'm actually not a fan of his most famous book Where the Wild Things Are.

And you'll just have to deal with it.

Anywhoozles... this book takes place in the booming city small town tiny fishing village of Shora in the Netherlands. How small? There are six children enrolled in the local school, to be fair though the next town is close enough for children and elderly men to walk to and back in a day. 

The sole girl in the school writes an essay about storks and reads it in school one day. In her essay she mentions that other towns have storks but there aren't any in Shora. This prompts the teacher to challenge the students to think about why there aren't any storks. (That's right student-guided learning! Happy dance time!!!)

The students decide that the problem is that Shora's roofs are all too steep and they should put a wheel on the school roof in hopes that storks will build a nest, the rest of the novel outlines the various searches for a wagon wheel. The students need to work in various ways to try and solve their problem, I love that this book encourages the learning process - identify a problem, look for solutions to the problem, test solutions, and review the results.

Another cool thing is that there is an intergenerational dimension to this book. The children, in their search for a wheel, begin to really talk to the adults around them, especially the older people that they usually avoided. This leads to them discovering some amazing things and finding their greatest helpers.

All in all this was a sweet book, with a moral that is carried forth through the text that if enough people begin wondering about something, then eventually something will come of it. I think that I will be looking for more books by Meindert DeJong!