Wonderful book for late summer

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 4:50pm by annevm

Rascal by Sterling North was a Newbery Honor book in 1964, the year my mom started encouraging me to read it. “Such a wonderful story,“ she would say, as I headed for the pool without the book. It sounded boring - at the end of World War I, a boy turns a raccoon into a pet. I was a girl, and I read other things. Over the years, Rascal became a family joke: “Have you read it yet? Still too busy?“ Finally, I read it this summer, and my now-long-gone mom was right: Rascal is a wonderful story, warmly written and evocative of a wilder Wisconsin than I ever imagined.