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My suspicion however, is that only the very brightest, or most nature-loving of today's adolescents will appreciate it. Most episodes are about the raccoon, but in others, Rascal is just a player in a larger story about Sterling's childhood in the small town upper mid-west. Sterling has an older brother serving in France, but his Summer and fall are all wrapped around Rascal, the raccoon he has brought home.

His mother is dead, and he is the only child of an indulging and permissive father, who even takes weeks long business trips, leaving Sterling at home on his own.The time period is World War I. but I don't think many 12-year-olds could appreciate the beauty of every sentence, or the value of a book in which plot isn't particularly relevant.Sterling North finds a baby raccoon when he is 12 years old, and like so many other wild animals in his past, he takes it home to keep as a pet. It's not that today's 12-year-old wouldn't understand what they were reading in this book. The writing is beautiful in a poetic way. It is also more of a paean to nature and an old fashioned rustic way of life than it is a story. Read moreĪlthough excellent, this one seemed an odd selection for a Newbery Honor. My only reservation with the book is the manner in which Sterling acquires Rascal but the ending compensates. I think I actually preferred listening to this one rather than reading it, although it's been many years since I first read it.

Jim Weiss has a rich, warm voice and narrates the story beautifully.

I listened to the audio of this book with my eight-year-old daughter, and she immediately began trying to tame a crow (raccoons being verboten near our chickens). From the unfinished canoe in the living room to the fenced off Christmas tree, life in the North household is unconventional, but warm and radiating that sense of childhood innocence in nature that often feels absent in today's less rural world. Sterling relates the tales of his and Rascal's misadventures over the course of a year. His inseparable best friend, though, is Rascal, a young raccoon. An avid naturalist, Sterling raises a variety of unusual pets: Poe, the crow, two skunks, a drooling St. Things are pretty quiet in rural Wisconsin in 1917, unless, that is, you are eleven-year-old Sterling North.

Rascal book raccoon