![]() ![]() And the story begins when Lina voluntarily writes an essay on storks, who visit all the other villages around them, including Nes where her aunt lives, but never come to Shora. Here there are only six children who go to school (the rest are too small or too big)-five boys-big Jella, slow and clumsy Eleka, kind Auka, twins Dirk and Pier (who claim that if they make one mistake, it counts as double-and who look like ‘second cousins’)-and one girl, Lina, often left out of all the games with the boys, since, well, she’s a girl. The Wheel on the School takes us to the small fishing village of Shora in Friesland (the Netherlands) where DeJong himself belonged (Friesland, not Shora). My pick, The Wheel on the School won the Newberry Medal in 1955, and it didn’t take long to see why. ![]() ![]() After holding various jobs during the great depression, he began writing children’s fiction at the suggestion of a local librarian, and published his first work, The Big Goose and the Little White Duck in 1938. Meindert DeJong (1906–1991) was a Dutch born American author of children’s literature and winner of the Hans Christian Andersen award for his contributions to the field in 1962, besides several other prizes and nominations. ![]()
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